"If the judge had read the FIR and consulted the investigation officer, the error would not have been possible," Advocate Asif Chattha.
Additional District and Sessions Judge Sajjad Ahmed mistakenly granted bail to a man accused of writing a dishonoured Rs2.7 million cheque, after a man claiming to be the complainant said he had no objection to the grant of bail.
The judge, upon learning that the supposed complainant was actually the brother of the complainant, later had to cancel the grant of bail.
According to the FIR of the case, Abdul Shakoor and Muhammad Ashraf were business partners in a fruit market.
They decided to end their partnership, upon which Ashraf wrote a cheque for Rs2.7 million to Shakoor. The latter filed a complaint for a case under Section 489-F (dishonesty in issuing a cheque) of the Pakistan Penal Code against Ashraf after the cheque allegedly bounced.
On Thursday, Ashraf’s petition for pre-arrest bail came up before the judge.
A man named Abdul Ahad appeared before the judge, claimed to be the complainant, and declared that he had no objection to the bail being confirmed, as he and the accused had reached a compromise. The judge did so.
But later, Shakoor appeared before the court and, in anger, questioned why the bail had been granted in his absence, a source told The Express Tribune.
The judge initially denied having done so, but when he was presented the case file, realised his error, the source said.
The judge issued an order stating that the proceedings from earlier were not sustainable and so the grant of bail order stood recalled.
Judge Ahmed confirmed that he had erred in granting the bail when the complainant was not present.
He said that the error occurred because of the heavy workload at the court. He said that Ahad had also attended previous hearings and he had thought he was the complainant.
Asked if legal action would be taken against Ahad, he said that he had no plan to do so.
Advocate Asif Chattha, a lawyer not attached to the case, said that the judge’s excuse about having a busy workload was a poor one. He said that when the case came up, if the judge had read the FIR and consulted the investigation officer, the error would not have been possible. He said that under the law, action should be taken against the man who pretended to be the complainant, as he had defrauded the court.
Judges have made such errors before. In January 2012, Additional District and Sessions Judge Chaudhry Aurangzeb granted bail to a man accused of writing a dishonoured cheque while the actual accused was at the police station.
The judge later cancelled his order when the counsel of the complainant pointed out the error.
And in August 2012, Additional District and Sessions Judge Muhammad Saleem also mistakenly granted pre-arrest bail to an impostor while the accused was still in police custody. The ruse was discovered when the lawyer presented the bail order to the investigation officer, who at the time was taking the accused to a magistrate’s court.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 3rd, 2013.
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