Free legal advice: Retired judges defend their case

The judges say that they are running government approved offices and that the accusations are baseless.

KARACHI:

Retired judges who have been ‘accused’ by the Karachi Bar Association (KBA) of running NGOs that provide legal aid to habitual criminals and take away cases from young practitioners, appeared at the Karachi Press Club to defend their case. They asserted that they are not NGOs and in fact they have been established with the approval of the Sindh High Court and the government.

The KBA, Malir Bar Association and Sindh Bar Council, they have united against the Legal Aid Offices, the Karachi Centre for Dispute Resolution (KCDR) and the Victim-Offender Reconciliation Peacemaking Programme (VORPP). The accusers have been boycotting the courts since Wednesday, and this has resulted in 148 pending cases in the city and district courtrooms of Karachi.

Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid of Legal Aid Offices was accused for heading and forming the committee and expanding it to help male prisoners in addition to women and children, without approval from the KBA. Zahid defended his Committee for Welfare of Prisoners by saying that under the law the approval of the KBA is not required and that his committee only included male prisoners when the government requested them to do so in 2006. Justice Zahid said that it is the constitutional responsibility of the government under Articles 4 and 9 to arrange advocates to represent those who cannot afford the professional fees of a lawyer.

He said that “the real cause of the allegations is the finances that have been allocated this year for helping the poor. The chief minister allocated a sum of Rs220 million for legal aid of the poor. They think that I am going to keep this money in my pocket, but this will not happen,” said Zahid.

Allegations were made against the ‘established’ legal aid providers for charging extra fees and for corruption. There were even complaints against his air conditioned office. In response to all this, Zahid said that he “gets a very handsome pension which is enough for our monthly expenses,” and that is why he does not even ask the government for any fees.

He explained that his present office next to the Juvenile Jail was set up with funds collected from private donors and that the accounts of all his projects are audited and there is a complete record of the cases. He disregarded the allegations of being paid $5,000 per case and finding lucrative jobs for retired judges.

“To blame us for taking away the financial means of young lawyers is a baseless accusation because we are working for people who are so poor they couldn’t really have paid these young lawyers anything,” said Zahid.

Samina Noman who heads the VORPP said that her office had been ransacked three times by angry protesters. She told The Express Tribune that VORPP does not provide legal representation, it only focuses on mediation and it was set up with the approval of SHC.

The KCDR was represented by Justice Zafar Sheikh. Sheikh said that it was established in 2006 with the support of the High Court and the International Finance Commission. He said that it deals with Alternative Dispute Resolution cases for small and medium enterprises and is working on the National Judicial Policy 2010 for clearing the backlog of pending cases in courts.

Both Justice Zahid and Justice Zafar Sheikh said that their offices are not only serving the poorest of the poor in the country and clearing the backlog of cases but also providing training to new practitioners. People working in Legal Aid get a remuneration cheque of Rs16,000 per month, said a young lawyer, Ataullah Abbasi.

The former law minister, Iqbal Haider, who spoke on his own and Justice Fakhruddin G Ebrahim’s behalf, condemned the KBA strike and said that this action is only punishing the litigants. “It is counter-productive and the only way to resolve matters is through dialogue,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2011.