If police records (more often 90 percent flawed) are the sole determinants of court judgments, then do we need judges with human blood running in them to adjudicate the criminal cases? Perhaps, the computers would do the job quick to rid country of backlog of thousand of old cases. Punch in the FIR which police is infamous for registering after protracted delays and other police records, evidences etc to dish out the judgments. If human passion and factor is missing, then computer is quicker and better option available.
Perhaps, this has happened in the Mukhtaran Mai’s case. Trusting the police records known for horrendous corruption and resorting not to judicious use of human judgment is a mistake. They could have visited the site (if they did not) to have found the truth. The SCP judgment sadly suggests that the heinous act of rape to be of an individual and not by the gang which is simply unbelievable in the kind of verdicts these feudal based ‘panchayats’ often resort to. Muktaran Mai is right to have lost trust in courts and in leaving her case to Allah’s court.
ASIFA QUERASHY
Dubai
