Farhan Khaliq Anwer Advocate; The Lords International [Magazine of Law & Law Fields]

  NO LAW CAN BE GOOD LAW IF IT IS UNABLE TO BE ENFORCED   The current state of crime control in our country is not the sole fault of the country's law enforcement agencies. In addition to law enforcement, the responsibility lies with policy makers of the country and the judiciary also.What is lacking in Pakistan is the ability of its criminal justice apparatus to deal with crime.When crimes of a dehumanizing nature are committed repeatedly, and no law enforcement officer or agency is held responsible and accountable for the recurrence of the crime, it exposes the fallacy in the argument that laws in our country are good and the problem lies with enforcement. If a law enforcement officer does not fear accountability and hence fails or, as it often happens, refuses to intervene to prevent crime, the finger points to the state, which allows a culture of irresponsibility among law enforcement officers. Fault lies with the judiciary as well. When courts take a decade t...

ROZNAMCHA - POLICE DAILY DIARY Section 44 of POLICE ACT 1861 reads “ Police-officers to keep diary.--It shall be the duty of every officer in charge of a police-station to keep a general diary in such form shall, from time to time, be prescribed by the State Government and to record therein all complaints and charges preferred, the names of all persons arrested, the names of the complainants, the offences charged against them, the weapons or property that shall have been taken from their possession or otherwise, and the names of the witnesses who shall have been examined. The Magistrate of the district shall be at liberty to call for and inspect such diary”. And according to rule no; 22.48 of the Police Rules 1934 , “Shortly before the close of each quarter, books containing the proper number of pages ensuring the three months shall be issued to police station by the Superintendent.  The Superintendent shall fix the hours at which station diaries shall be daily clo...

Legal system exists for litigants. In reality, however, this does not appear to be true and agony of the litigants is hardly felt by anyone. Number of seminars are being held, lectures are being delivered and committees after committees are being constituted to find out solutions for the delay in dispensation of justice. One would be astonished to know that the High Courts & Supreme Court of Pakistan works round the clock for maximum days in a year, that too with lesser number of judges than the approved posts of judges. But the problems causing delay in disposal of cases could not be solved. Off course delay in disposal of cases is not my point of discussion here but the real issue which requires serious attention and introspection is, how far the custom of observing  en bloc vacations in courts is just in the present context? It appears that the custom of observing vacations dates back to the British rule in our sub-continent. Before the British rule, justice was being ad...

FEW POINTS MAY HELP US UNDERSTAND THE REALITIES ü The law-enforcement officer, involved in manipulating the process of interrogation or interview, should face criminal prosecution in our functional rule of law system. But this seems virtually impossible, and scarcely even imaginable. ü The law-enforcement officer uses the process of interrogation or interview to extort bribes from both the suspect and the victim. ü In order to prove before the superior officers, the wider public and to show that the officer concerned is “seriously” pursuing the matter, the third-degree method / coerciveness / torture is used to quicken the process of investigation and to extract information from suspect, regardless of the quality or authenticity of information extracted. ü By ignoring mandate of law, most often, non-qualitative judgments & orders are passed and ambiguous facts are being written in case diaries of the suit or matter. This is done for the purpose of creating the rec...