Model Town Courts: Three judges squeezed into one courtroom

Magistrates run simultaneous hearings as room runs out.

LAHORE:

Three judicial magistrates have been forced to work from the same courtroom at the Model Town Courts for several months because of a lack of space, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Sajjad Ahmed Khan, Kanwar Anwaar and Rana Tajamal all share the room on the ground floor of the courts complex, along with their staff and the staff of a fourth judge. Until Mehboob Ahmed, that fourth magistrate, was transferred recently, he too had been working from the same room.

Litigants have been suffering most from the arrangement. Instead of the standard judge’s chair, the magistrates sit in three chairs of different colours and sizes and hold hearings simultaneously. Sometimes one of them has to move to the retiring room because there are too many people in the room. No nameplates identifying the magistrates hang outside the room, so people often struggle to find where their cases are to be heard.

The magistrates said that they had moved out of their courtrooms voluntarily to accommodate newly appointed female civil judges. They said sharing one room between three judges and their staff made their jobs very difficult.

Public inconvenience

A court staffer told The Express Tribune, on the condition of anonymity, about a fight in the courtroom a couple of months ago. “There were two judges holding hearings and a lot of people were inside, jostling for space. There was some scuffling and then a brawl erupted. It was against the dignity of the court,” he said.

He also expressed reservations over the court record, saying adequate measures were not being taken to maintain the record properly.

Talking to The Express Tribune, litigant Asma Bibi said she had wasted a whole hour trying to find the right courtroom to go to so she could move a complaint against her husband for marrying another woman. “I was sent to the first floor twice and back to the ground floor. I finally found the right place after one hour. There were no nameplates hanging outside,” she said.

New rooms

The three magistrates said that they had been promised they would be given separate rooms once the old bakhshi khana had been converted into courtrooms. They said that this promise was made to them at a meeting that was also attended by representatives of the Lahore Bar Association and District and Sessions Judge Mujahid Mustaqime Ahmed.

“It sets a very bad example. Three judges are working from the same room,” said LBA president Shehzad Hassan Shaikh. He said that he had visited the Model Town Courts a few days ago along with Judicial Magistrate Khalid Saeed Wattoo, LBA Model Town vice president Mian Hafeez and Tariq Zaman, the personal staffer officer to the district coordination officer, in this regard. He said that the old bakhshi khana would be torn down and two courtrooms would be built there. The old Town Office room would be converted into a third courtroom.

District and Session Judge Ahmed said that the magistrates had a right to separate rooms and would soon get them.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2011.