In the shadow of giants: Service in the halls of justice

Muhammad Roshan, a peon who has worked for 40 long years and served six chief justices, will retire next year.

ISLAMABAD:

When the court is in session, Muhammad Roshan, 60, dozes off on the carpet, peacefully tucked away behind a wooden desk. Then, just as the bell rings, he gets up immediately, sets his white turban firmly on his head and moves confidently to where he should be at that specific moment – just behind the chair of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Roshan is no ordinary man. For the last four decades, he has been serving as a ‘naib qasid’, or peon. He has been somewhat of a lucky charm for successive chief justices of Pakistan. Appointed by the apex court’s Rawalpindi registry in 1974, Roshan is retiring next year.

A lifetime of service

Roshan, who hails from the Bagh district of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, is known as Chacha by everybody. He is, in many ways, part of the court’s history.

“It was just my luck that whenever I was associated with a judge, he would reach the slot of chief justice,” remarks Roshan, a smile lightening up his aged face. So, in a way, he has been a lucky charm to all the judges he has served.

The incumbent chief justice is clearly a fan of Roshan’s work. When he reached the age of superannuation in August, Chief Justice Chaudhry approved a one-year extension in his service.

“It is only after the retirement of the chief justice that I will go to my native village permanently,” says the loyal one with firm resolve.

According to Roshan, the incumbent top judge is a source of inspiration for him and countless others.

“In all honesty, I can say that no judge I have served has worked harder than this chief justice, and no one will even in the future,” he says.

During all these years, Roshan has no interest in any case, and the only case about which he can cite some details is that of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. But everything else, all those facts, all those decades, is now a blur.

Not rich but content

As a low-ranking employee, Roshan has served at all the registries of the apex court, often working well beyond duty hours. And yet, throughout his life, he has never travelled by plane. For all his official trips to Karachi, Lahore and Quetta, he has never even sat in the airconditioned section of a train or bus.

During the past 40 years, all he has managed is getting a promotion recently – from naib qasid to qasid. He has also succeeded in getting his son, a matriculate, appointed as naib qasid in the apex court to replace him. His family can, of course, retain his official accommodation for a few more years.

Looking back at it all, Roshan is content. “I have no complaints against anyone,” he says, clearly a man at ease. “I am a happy man.”

The six chief justices Roshan served are:

Justice Muhammad Yaqoob Ali (1975-1977)

Justice Muhammad Haleem (1981-1989)

Justice Muhammad Afzal Zullah (1990-93)

Justice Ajmal Mian (1997-1999)

Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui (1999-2000)

Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry (2005-2013)

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th, 2013.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, Justice Muhammad Haleem's name was misspelled as Aleem. The error is regretted.