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Implementing the Police Reforms Committee Report-2019
Kamran Adil
It is an acknowledged fact that the justice sector of Pakistan is not in an ideal condition. Much is required to ameliorate this situation. In this regard, besides initiating expeditious justice projects in form of model criminal courts, model civil appellate courts and model magistrate courts, the Chief Justice of Pakistan Mr Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa is overseeing implementation of the Police Reforms Committee Report-2019 (hereinafter the Report). The Report was prepared by retired police officers after they were mandated to do so by the former Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mian Saqib Nisar, through a notification that institutionalized the effort into the work of a statutory body, the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP). In line with its Terms of Reference (ToRs), the Report addressed three core areas: (a) constitutionality of police laws and recommending a draft model police law, (b) professional issues that affect working of police, and (c) the cross-cutting legal issues that relate to police.
With concrete recommendations, the Report was launched on 14th January 2014. The incumbent CJP, after assuming the office, started personally supervising the implementation of the Report by constituting a Steering Committee comprising retired and serving police officers. Bringing the retired police officers and the serving Inspectors General of Police (IGPs) of the four provinces and three federal territories, i.e. the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) was an administrative innovation. The CJP started holding meetings every month and quietly saw to it that the recommendations are implemented. He started with professional issues of policing as these affect the public at large. He, very wisely, did not touch the recommendations about legislation that fall in the domain of the legislature. In the arena of professional issues, the first that was implemented was an effective and efficient system of police complaints.
Accordingly, all IGPs appointed senior police officers of the rank of Senior Superintendents of Police (SSPs) as Superintendent of Police SP/Complaints in all districts. As there were no sanctioned posts for the assignments, the IGPs re-designated existing posts as SP/Complaints. The SPs Complaints were required to listen to complaints of public at large against police. The concept worked well, and later, it was decided to task the SPs Complaints of all districts to deal with applications under sections 22-A and 22-B of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). These applications under section 22-A and 22-B were of quasi-judicial nature and were consuming much valuable time of judiciary. The experiment worked well and the impact was tangible as SP Complaints not only promptly got the First Information Reports (FIRs) registered, but in many cases, held police officials accountable for delay in registration. Simultaneously, the SP Complaints initiated proceedings under section 182 of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) against false and frivolous applicants. The balance between free and fair registration of FIRs is very well struck through this new administrative arrangement, which is still not institutionalized and will have to be fully owned by both the federal and provincial governments to sustain.
The second area that got attention of the Committee is the quality of investigation. As the legal framework of policing is detection-based, the investigations become very important. The Committee encouraged all the IGPs to move towards functional specialization. The IGPs established the homicide and anti-car lifting units as a first step toward functional specialization. In addition, with a string of judgments, the Supreme Court required that the police must base its investigations on scientific evidence, and not on manufactured and concocted evidence. In a recent judgment related to a false testimony by a police constable Khizar Hayat in a criminal case, the Supreme Court held that the principle of falsu in uno, falsu in omnibus (false in one, false in all) as an integral part of jurisprudence in criminal matters in Pakistan. Changing the poorly-maintained case diaries that record and log all the effort of investigation officers is also on the agenda of the Committee with respect to improving the quality of investigation. The street bureaucrat, i.e. the Investigation Officer (IO), exercises unbridled discretion, if his investigative decisions are not supervised effectively through timely and proper checking of his case diaries.
The Committee tried to curtail this unbridled discretion of IOs by introducing sequenced and officially-endorsed case diaries as part of police working.
The third area of interest for the Committee is the joint training of police, prosecution, judges and prison staff. The joint training, it is believed, will reduce the turf and blame game, and will infuse the team model in which all the stakeholders would work for a shared objective instead of working at cross-purpose. The work of the Committee is ongoing and it is likely to work now on subjects like urban policing, problems faced by the anti-terrorism courts and the synchronization of forensics and prosecution departments with police.
The foregoing details show that the incumbent Chief Justice of Pakistan has, quietly and without much histrionics, provided the much-needed leadership to the justice sector. His efforts must sustain, but the bureaucratic model of civil service that has no premium for specialization may not like to subscribe to the implementation model introduced by the judiciary. With Pakistan’s fragility increasing, it is high time the government and civil society supported the judiciary in its endeavours. This model should be extended to other components of the criminal and civil justice so as to alleviate the sufferings of the citizens. Timely action by the government will minimize the justice gap in Pakistan, which is globally increasing as documented by the Report on Measuring Justice Gap issued by the World Justice Project.
