LAHORE: Participants in a consultative session on Saturday urged the need to immediately bring about reforms in police and prosecution departments and the legal aid mechanism to improve the justice system which they said had failed to reach the doorsteps of people, especially the poor.

In Pakistan, the crisis of lack of access to justice had worsened to a point where the justice system had failed to reach the doorsteps of people who live below the poverty line, the participants opined.

The consultative session on reforming prosecution and free legal aid system was organized by PILDAT in collaboration with the Pakistan Bar Council. The consultation is a part of “Reforms in Rule of Law in Pakistan” project which is being supported by Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) under the Enhanced Democratic Accountability and Civic Engagement (EDACE) project.

Various tiers of legal practitioners, representatives of the Punjab Prosecution Service, Punjab Bar Council, Lahore High Court Bar Association, investigating officers of police, members of parliament discussed issues in the existing legislation and how to implement reforms proposed in the Prosecution and Free Legal Aid System of Pakistan.

They included senior advocate Ayesha Hamid, Pakistan Bar Council vice-chairman Azam Nazeer Tarar (centre); former Punjab governor and senior lawyer Shahid Hamid, former IGP Dr Shoaib Suddle, PILDAT president Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, Hazara University Faculty of Law dean Dr Sohail Shahzad, Punjab Prosecutor General Ihtasham Qadir, Punjab Bar Council vice-chairperson Farah Ejaz Baig, Senator Mohsin Leghari, MPAs Ayesha Javed and Saadia Sohail Rana, LHCBA president Pir Masood Chishti, senior police officials, lawyers, judges and prosecutors.

The consensus was that due to the prevailing abysmal state of the rule of law (ROL) in Pakistan, there was an urgent need to bring about institutional reforms in three key areas of the country’s justice system --- police, prosecution and legal aid.

To make justice accessible -- particularly to the underprivileged communities -- it has become imperative to formulate and incorporate effective, sustainable and free services in the justice system.

An earnest and aggressive ROL reforms agenda must be undertaken both at the federal and provincial levels.

The participants pointed out that in Pakistan accused persons were often acquitted due to weak investigation and lack of evidence. One way to reduce the excessive burden of litigation on Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System was to encourage mechanisms of Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR).

The proposed reforms should not only focus on the prosecution service but all those aspects of police work and investigations, which directly affected the performance of prosecutors due to weak police-prosecution liaison.

There was a need to have an informed debate and productive discourse on required amendments and improvements in existing legislation, prevailing system and contemporary infrastructure of prosecution services.

They demanded amendments to laws for improving the prosecution service, Punjab Forensic Science Agency’s access to Nadra database, and improvement in the code of conduct for prosecutors.

The systemic reforms must include computerized FIRs, reporting of poor investigation by district public prosecutors to regional police officer, recruitment criteria of prosecutors with a one-year probationary period, binding guidelines for prosecutors, hiring of prosecutors through the Public Service Commission as well as de-politicization of the prosecution service.

Improvements in infrastructure must include training of police investigators and prosecutors, allocation of separate training budgets, budget for more recruitment, mandatory training courses for public prosecutors and availability of forensic equipment in hospitals.

They agreed that police-prosecution liaison at the ‘thana’ (police station) was essential for an effective justice system. The government must increase funding for police and its investigation branch in order to strengthen the quality of evidence at trial.

The need to equip police officers with modern technological knowledge and tools was also emphasized.

About free aid, they maintained a majority of Pakistanis were unable to access to the formal legal system mainly for want of financial resources and lack of awareness of the law and legal rights.

They said the state recognized the need for legal aid and had allocated some nominal funds for this purpose, but the distribution of services was not systematic because of its scattered and defective framework.

There were laws and rules in Pakistan on the subject of legal assistance for the poor and vulnerable segments of society. But there were serious issues in the operation of these laws and rules.

All laws and rules had different custodians. The judiciary, prosecution office and law department all had their own mechanisms of legal assistance for cases of support services in civil and criminal matters.

There were multiple actors who had provision of legal assistance as their responsibility. Yet, most needy litigants and other segments of society in Pakistan were deprived of access to justice.

Published in Dawn, November 22nd, 2015