Problems with the judiciary took the fore over the weekend when a member of the two-judge bench that ‘granted’ Shehbaz Sharif bail said he never approved of the judgment. The story started midweek when Lahore High Court Justice Sarfraz Dogar issued a short order “unanimously” granting bail to the PML-N president. But a few days later, we learned that the other judge on the NAB appellate bench, Justice Asjad Javed Ghural, refused to sign the order and questioned the unanimity of the order, saying that his opinion was ignored.
Under the circumstances as described by Justice Ghural, the case should have been considered a split decision with no short order issued. The case has now been referred to a referee judge chosen by the LHC chief justice. The as-yet-unnamed referee judge will go through detailed judgments written by both justices and chose one, which will be the ‘winner’.
In the meantime, the Justice Dogar-Justice Ghural bench has been dissolved by the LHC chief justice and replaced by one comprising Justice Alia Neelam and Justice Farooq Haider. Justice Dogar has been moved to the LHC Multan bench and Justice Ghural to the Bahawalpur bench. The bench will inherit several high-profile cases, including one against PML-N leader Khawaja Asif. But what went wrong in the first place?
Let us set aside the opinions of the judges for a moment. Whether or not Shehbaz deserves bail is now a sideshow in what is being seen as an embarrassing moment for the judiciary. Judges disagree all the time. That is a standard feature of multi-member benches. What is odd is that either one judge completely ignored another and issued a legally questionable ruling, or one judge changed his opinion after the fact. Neither of these scenarios is acceptable.
At present, it is a he said-he said situation, since what happened behind the scenes is not publically known. But if ever there was a case that should be heard by the highest legal authorities, it is this one. Incidents such as this one erode faith in the judiciary. It is up to the top judges to set things right by determining what happened and how, and doling out punishments as appropriate. Sweeping it under the rug will only worsen the erosion.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 20th, 2021.
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