LAHORE: Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khan Khosa on Saturday said that the reforms recently introduced in the police helped reduce burden on courts in terms of cases against non-registration of FIRs or police excesses.

The CJP was speaking at the concluding ceremony of a three-day workshop on gender-based violence held at the Punjab Judicial Aca­demy in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank.

He said that during the last three months the police department had addressed 71,000 complaints of the citizens and redressed their grievances with respect to registration of FIRs.

He said the mechanism of complaint redress introduced by the police had reduced fresh institution of cases in the district courts by 11 per cent and in all high courts by 20pc. “And this has been achieved within the last three months,” added the chief justice.

Explaining the recent initiatives taken by the senior judiciary, CJP Khosa told the audience that it was first decided that there could be no justice in a court of law unless the testimony produced or the evidence produced in such courts was based on truth. “The senior judiciary wanted to make sure that there is no falsehood which enters the courtroom and distorts justice,” he added.

Says action was taken by the police on 71,000 complaints of citizens over the past three months

He pointed out that at least 15 eyewitnesses in murder cases were being tried under perjury charges before courts in different parts of the country.

CJP Khosa said another initiative was taken for the training and capacity building of different actors in the justice sector. He said there were judicial academies in the country that were initially designed for training of judges but their scope had been expanded. “Now these academies have started training investigators, prosecutors and even lawyers,” said the chief justice.

He said that state-of-the-art research centres had been established with the appointment of three judges of the Supreme Court and eight civil judges as research officers for the facilitation of judges.

“Judges even sitting in districts like Daharki or Zhob can get maximum information available in the entire world with a click of a button. So, whenever you have a doubt just call the research centres and they will tell you what is the law in Pakistan and in the rest of the world on a particular question of law,” he said.

The chief justice said the entire case law of Pakistan as well as the legal decisions delivered by the judges over the last 70 years would be digitalised. “This is revolutionary and changes the whole culture how a judge functions in this country,” CJ Khosa said.

He said the senior judiciary had fine-tuned the system to control possibilities of adjournments and delays in cases by establishing model courts. He noted that in the last 96 days, 10,600 cases of murders and narcotics had been decided by the model courts. He also lauded the working of model courts for gender-based violence and offences involving children.

Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah of the Supreme Court and Lahore High Court Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Shamim Khan also spoke on the occasion.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2019