Babar questions the declaration of DNA tests as secondary evidence in rape cases. PHOTO: FILE
The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML -N) endorsed a Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) decree proclaiming DNA tests as “secondary evidence” in rape cases.
In a stiff resistance to a motion in Senate moved by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar on Monday, leader of the house in Senate Raja Zafarul Haq plainly said that a DNA test is a collaborative report which can’t be taken as primary evidence.
“The council [CII] had not said anything wrong by declaring DNA tests as secondary evidence in rape cases”, he stated. “Eyewitnesses have always been the primary [source of] evidence in all cases and medical reports could not be taken as primary evidence,” said Haq, who was one of the closest aides to former military ruler Ziaul Haq.
Speaking on the motion, Babar questioned some of the more recent CII pronouncements, especially the declaration of DNA tests as secondary evidence in rape cases, and asked whether the council holds legal authority anymore after having submitted its final report to parliament in 1997, as required under the constitution.
“The task assigned to it by the 1973 Constitution has since been completed and it has no business to continue making reports,” he pointed out. Babar recalled four recent pronouncements which, he said, lent credence to the view that Pakistan was a country where logic and reason were turned upside down.
In May 2013, the council declared that DNA test results are not acceptable as primary evidence in rape cases even though it is admissible as evidence in courts across the world.
He further said the Council earlier rejected a draft bill for establishing homes for the elderly on the ground that the idea was against the norms and traditions of society. Recommendations such as these demonstrate how dangerously out of touch with the times the CII is today, he said. It is true that the CII is an advisory body, but – because of its dictatorial baggage since the ’80s – its pronouncements tend to acquire an air of moral authority and only add to confusion, Babar added.
He said that the council had already reviewed all the laws and according to its special report in 2008 it had found that 90 per cent of the laws were not in conflict with Islam. He said that the CII had also become redundant, because of the Federal Shariat Court , which could examine any law on the touchstone of whether it was Islamic or not.
Senator Sajid Mir termed the motion anti-Pakistan and said that countrymen, who believe in 1973 constitution, could not even think of speaking against the council. He claimed that CII is the sole body which rightly interprets the Holy Quran.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 21st, 2014.
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