Thousands of challans held up by prosecutors

‘Matter being investigated, officials will be punished’.

LAHORE:

The submission of thousands of challans and reports for cancellation of FIRs to the courts is being held up in the District Public Prosecution Department.

Under the law, a prosecutor must submit a challan – or charge sheet  or FIR-cancellation report to the court within three days of receiving it from the police. Most of these FIRs relate to possession of liquor or unlicensed weapons, gambling, fraud, making threats and other non-heinous crimes.

District Public Prosecutor Azhar Hussain Malik said that some 3,000 challans and 1,000 reports that were to be submitted to the Cantt and district courts had been held up. He said that they were mostly up to 15 days old, but he had seen one challan that had been submitted by the police four months ago.

Malik said that he had informed the prosecution secretary of the matter and would submit a report to him within a week, after which action would be taken against negligent officials. He said that the delayed challans and reports were being scrutinised to ascertain the cause of the hold-up. He said that many prosecutors had given the excuse that they were busy sitting the exams for qualification as civil judges.

A source told The Express Tribune that there were more than 5,000 challans and 2,000 FIR-cancellation reports that had been held up, and many of them had been submitted in December 2012. The source said that some District Prosecution Department officials and court staffers took bribes to delay the submission of challans to the courts. The source added that some challans to which the prosecutors had objected had not been returned to the police for several months.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2013.