Court takes up delay in police paperwork

Justice Amir Hani Muslim had found that the submission of charge sheets was being delayed inordinately.

KARACHI: Once a police case or FIR has been filed, the police have to inform a judicial magistrate about it within 24 hours and then present a list of charges or a “charge sheet” within a specified time limit. This, however, is not always the case in reality and delays in charging suspects means that cases pile up for the courts.

To decide the controversy over a delay in the submission of charge sheets in FIRs (First Information Reports), a division bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) ordered on Monday a Deputy Inspector General Police (DIGP) and Member Inspection Team (MIT-II) to jointly scrutinize the lists submitted by the Provincial Police Officer of Sindh and MIT himself.

The delay came to the fore when some judicial officers complained that a delay in the disposal of cases was caused by a failure of the police and investigating officers to submit the charge sheets or reports for the disposal of a FIR under Section 173 of the CrPC (Criminal Procedure Code).

On Monday, the PPO appeared on court notice and endorsed the report submitted by his predecessor and said that a committee consisting of a DIGP, five AIGPS and a DSP had rechecked the record and reached the conclusion that the report submitted earlier on was not incorrect and that a similar position had emerged upon the committee’s verification. The report said that the number of FIRs in which final reports under section 173 had not been submitted were 1,661. The MIT-II had in his report put the number of cases pending submission of charge sheets at 5,422.

The bench, dissatisfied with the conflicting figures, said in its order on Monday that “it [had] heard the PPO who placed the report collected from the relevant police officials and the report by the MIT-II was also taken note of. To resolve the controversy, a senior police officer not below the rank of a DIGP be deputed to sit with the MIT-II and scrutinize both lists - one by the IGP and the revised  statement by the MIT-II within one month’s time”. The bench headed by Justice Amir Hani Muslim adjourned the matter for a month.

It was Justice Amir Hani Muslim who had himself during a visit to a subordinate courts found that the submission of charge sheets was being delayed inordinately, as a result of which the number of cases pending before the courts had gone up. The law requires an IO to inform the judicial magistrate concerned of an FIR within 24 hours and is bound to submit a charge sheet within the stipulated time.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2010.