Identification parade

Asfandyar spent 10 years in jail for a crime he had never committed. An anti-terrorism court had found him guilty of murdering a student in 2009 and sentenced him to death. The Lahore High Court later commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment. The case took no less than a decade to reach a decision stage in the Supreme Court where a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, ruled Asfandyar acquitted, observing that the magistrate did not fulfil legal obligations in identification parade. The top court has also summoned the magistrate for carrying out faulty identification, in what is the first such action of its kind.

The case is indeed distressing, and our judicial history has had even more distressing ones. We even had a case where the top court’s acquittal orders reached a person after he had died. Not long ago — in October 2016 to be exact — the Supreme Court had exonerated Mazhar Hussain who had been sentenced to death for a murder by a sessions court in 2004. But the acquittal came two years too late. Mazhar, whose original appeal against the death sentence had been turned down by a high court years before, died of coronary failure about two years ago while still in incarceration. He did not live to see the day when he would be acquitted. Justice delayed is justice denied. In the Asfandyar case, the CJP remarked, “It seems that the police arrested the man first and generated evidence later.” This too is nothing unusual — something that is being alleged in the recent Sahiwal incident as well, by the relatives of those who lost their lives at the hands of CTD officials.

At the helms of judiciary now is Mr Justice Khosa, who has regularly highlighted flaws in the criminal justice system. Let’s hope the honourable top judge is able to “build dams against undue and unnecessary delays in the judicial determination of cases, against frivolous litigation and against fake witnesses and false testimonies”.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 14^th, 2019.

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