Child maid torture: Ex-judge, wife slapped with enhanced jail terms

IHC division bench dismisses their plea challenging conviction and sentence; convicts shifted to jail

ISLAMABAD: As a capital judge and his wife sought to have a sentence convicting them of torturing a juvenile housemaid, a higher court not only dismissed their appeal but also extended their prison terms on Monday.

A division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), comprising Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Minagul Hassan Aurangzeb, dismissed an application from former additional district and sessions judge (ADSJ) Raja Khurram Ali Khan and his wife Maheen Zafar, challenging their conviction and sentence.

The division bench enhanced their sentence to three years from previously awarded one year.

“[We] uphold the conviction of Raja Khurram Ali Khan and Maheen Zafar under section 328-A and enhance the sentence to simple imprisonment of three years each along with payment of fine of Rs.50,000,” the bench stated in its order on Monday.

The court has also convicted the couple under section 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and sentenced them serve ‘simple imprisonment’ of six months each.

The sentences, though, will run concurrently.

Following the pronouncement of the judgment, the judge was taken into custody and shifted to jail.

“There can be no compensation in monetary terms for the anguish suffered by the victim, an innocent, helpless and vulnerable child, but we feel that an amount of Rs500,000 … may be a reasonable symbolic payment as 'daman' to Tayyaba Bibi as compensation for the agony which she had to suffer,” the judgment read as it held Maheen Zafar liable for payment of the ‘daman’ under sections 337 A(i) and 337 F (i) of the PPC.

Failure to protect the weak

While parting with the judgment, IHC’s judges have expressed their “observations regarding the failure of the criminal justice system in protecting the most weak and vulnerable members of the society.”

While referring to the suo moto notice of the supreme court in the case, the bench observed, “it appears that only then the system started functioning for this victim of neglect, inhuman treatment and the worst form of abuse,” as a medical board was thereafter constituted and proper investigations ensued.

“Without the publicity on the social and electronic media ultimately leading to the notice taken by the august Supreme Court,” the order read, “the criminal justice system was not responding to the plight of a battered and helpless child.”

The court further added that “this apparent collapse of the criminal justice system for the weak and vulnerable segments of the society and its efficacy for the privileged raise serious questions regarding rule of law.”

Moreover, it read, there should have been no need for suo moto notice for making the criminal justice system functional for a battered child regardless to the person accused of having committed an offence.

Previously, a single bench of the IHC comprising Justice Aamer Farooq had held the couple guilty of harming, neglecting and abandoning the juvenile housemaid employed at judge’s residence in the capital.

On April 17, Justice Farooq had sentenced the couple to serve a year in prison and fined Rs50,000 each under Section 328-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). The couple, however, could not be arrested as they had obtained bail couple just hours after their conviction against a surety of Rs50,000 each.

In their appeal, the couple — through their counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi and Raja Farooq Haider —requested the court to set aside the judgment of April 17 on grounds that the conviction to the extent of section 328-A of Pakistan Penal Code was based upon speculation, presumption, surmises, conjectures and mens-rea and actus-rea of the section cannot be presumed by the court.

The case had grabbed the country’s attention in December 2016 when the judge and his wife were booked and were later been charged for allegedly assaulting, confining, ill-treating, neglecting, abandoning, harming and injuring the minor housemaid.

They have been accused of keeping the girl in wrongful confinement, burning her hand, beating her with a ladle, detaining her in a storeroom, and threatening her with even worse. The couple had pleaded ‘not guilty’ after they were indicted and stood trial.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2018.