Yearly Archives: 2021

The competent prosecution of criminal offences is a fundamental term of our social contract. The state investigates, arms the prosecutor, determines and provides the venue for litigation and hands down the sentence to the guilty. In return, citizens are entitled to expect that criminal prosecutions are properly financed and capably litigated. However, the reality bears no correlation to the fundamental terms of our social contract. Pakistan’s legal system is a derivative of the English legal system. However, unlike the latter, the legal system in Pakistan is confronted with an array of problems. A look into our legal framework reflects that the prosecution department is not delivering its full potential. Is it because of the deprivation of funds or shortage of staff? We shall examine the factors that contribute to this underperformance through the course of this article. Until a few years ago, all prosecutions in the High Courts were conducted by the Advocate General’s office. It eventually separated itself from criminal prosecutions when the Punjab Criminal Prosecution department was launched. Administering justice with a designated department to cater to criminal prosecutions was a plausible move indeed. However, the department has been struggling to uphold its true purpose and has not been able to come out of the woods yet. Before homing in to the glitches within the prosecution department, it is important to bear in mind that it is a government establishment. The deprivation of funds have had some serious implications over the performance of public prosecutors trying to establish the guilt…

This article aims to highlight the scope of pre-trial arrest and detention in Islamic criminal law and procedure. The nature and history of Islamic criminal law is an exceptionally intricate subject and requires analysis at a much broader scale. More so, specific sources on the issue of pre-trial detention are scant and reflect the lack of a uniform body of rules and procedures under Islamic criminal law. It is, therefore, pointed out at the outset that while this article has been written with extreme care and thought based on different sources available, it is merely a humble effort to better the understanding of the place and significance of pre-trial detention in Islamic criminal law and procedure with the consequential deduction that pre-trial detention in Islamic criminal law and procedure is justifiable according to the Islamic injunctions in today’s criminal justice system. Introduction The requirement of religious legitimacy for any law in Pakistan is well spelt out in Article 227 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973. Therefore, we need not have any other academic reason, of which there are many, to justify making laws for Pakistan that are ‘Islamic’. Why is it significant then to explore religious legitimacy for pre-trial arrest and detention powers conferred upon state officials when there are, arguably, checks and balances in place in the relevant laws, laid out and emphasized through sound and well-reasoned case law? The answer perhaps is that “the Islamic pedigree of any law or legal construct is a crucial source and measure of its legitimacy in Muslim…