While the CII has said courts could use DNA as secondary evidence, the stance taken, after much dithering over the matter, will inevitably hold back convictions and discourage women from reporting rape. PHOTO: FILE
We have had an unusually high number of cases of rape reported over the last week or so, possibly in response to the brutal assault this month on a five-year-old in Lahore. But the hopes these women, girls and their families may have had of getting justice fade with the recommendation of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) that DNA evidence should not be admissible as primary evidence in rape cases. This, of course, makes it far more likely that perpetrators of rape will escape punishment, given that DNA has become the most widely used method worldwide to pin down rapists. It has been used regularly by the police at home too.
However, Maulana Muhammad Khan Sheerani of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl, who heads the CII — a body constitutionally mandated to ‘Islamise’ the country’s laws — has held that the Council has decided that DNA findings could not override religious injunctions requiring rape be verified by four, male Muslims of ‘good standing’. As we saw in the past, prior to the advent of DNA testing, victims of rape, for obvious reasons, generally failed to produce this bevy of witnesses. While the CII has said courts could use DNA as secondary evidence, the stance taken, after much dithering over the matter, will inevitably hold back convictions and discourage women from reporting rape in a country where under 20 per cent of cases, according to monitoring groups, are reported anyway.
The CII also opposed the death penalty for those who made false accusations of blasphemy and rejected the 2006 Women’s Protection Act which replaced the Zia-era Hudood Ordinance. The blasphemy issue had caused some debate within the CII, with Allama Tahir Ashrafi, according to reports, advocating death for false accusers. The final outcomes from the CII have not, however, been very positive. Indeed they seem to take us backwards, by making it harder to bring rapists to justice, leaving the much misused blasphemy laws unchanged and resurrecting the Hudood Ordinance with all its issues. This is not a positive attitude and reflects the issues involved with the CII itself as a body and forces us to ask if we should not be taking steps to discourage rape.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 25th, 2013.
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To speak of logic. DNA only confirms sex, and does not confirm whether it was done in consent or by force. This is what CII said, i read it somewhere. ET should not twist it.
look, DNA can prove sexual intercourse but NOT rape. it is not a CCTV camera. you need witnesses and if there is none and the woman is the only witness then investigation is carried out by authorities (including DNA tests) and tazeer is handed out in islamic shariah if the suspect is proven guilty. tazeer can be anyt punishment but death. the culprit can be fined, jailed, flogged etc based on available evidence.
for a death sentence you need four witnesses of the rape. not for tazeer.
see mufti taqi's article on al-balagh that explains this better.
@darbullah: The "maulanas" have distorted the matter of the witness of four pious persons. This is required in case of voluntary adultery and the purpose is to practically make the punishment of stoning impossible, the idea is to use the mentioning of the harsh sentence as a detrrence. Now our "ulemas' have applied it on case of forced intercourse too. The "ulemas" there was time when denied loudspeakers, TV, printing press etc. It's time we had wordly and religiously educated scholars or it would take another couple of decades for our traditional set of "ulemas" to term DNA as applicable like was the case for loudspeakers, TV, printing press etc.
@harkol: I hope your advice is part of a joke. Women need to be treated as human beings and should be able to do whatever they like. WE need to get away from thoughts and ideology of thousand year old.
I think the govt. of Pakistan should launch an awareness campaign among women. Never go out anywhere without 'four gentlemen of good standing'. Always stay at home with 'four gentlemen of good standing', so if you are raped, then they can stand by and watch, and bear witness in court, so you can get justice.
Surely, a advertising campaign and some TV campaign should help?
See, this is the reason why the crimes that shook India never happens in Pakistan. First you have find four pious persons to witness it and then DNA is inadmissible.
If Pakistan makes Forensic science too inadmissible, there would be no crime at all and Pakistan will have the distinction of being crime free.
This is an immensely ignorant editorial. The CII has no power to legislate per the constitution, it can only recommend (article 230). Criminal procedure is reserved to Parliament (article 142). the current evidence act <qanun-e-shahdat 1984) in section 164 permits a court to adduce evidence made available by modern devices and techniques. The superior courts of Pakistan have long since allowed DNA evidence most recently in the case reported at PLD 2010 FSC 28.
Even the most sophisticated lawyers do not under stand DNA evidence. To be fair it is media's responsibility to educated these Islamist and general public. ET should publish articles in the local media to educate general public, lawyers and people with stone age mentality. Religion is dynamic not static identity.Please also publish article about how people got release from prison after conviction and serving sentence and got there respect back due to DNA.