Justice Athar Minallah asserts judges violate oath when affected by social Media

The SC judge said Pakistan would not have been split into two, if the oath was not transgressed.

SLAMABAD: Supreme Court Justice Athar Minallah on Saturday said social media should not influence judges, adding that if a judge is affected by it then they are violating their oath.

Addressing the second law bridge workshop on superior court reporting at a private hotel in Islamabad, Justice Minallah said if even critics trusted the court then it was a test of the judiciary. Everyone should criticise, but also trust the judiciary, he maintained.

Referring to the lack of freedom of speech in the country, the top court judge said the endless process of censor kicked off after the state’s censoring Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 speech.

Reminiscing his first case as a judge, he said it was a bail plea and a 16-year-old suspect was before the court for putting up a banner against an apex court judge. The subordinate court rejected the plea saying he had committed a crime against the entire judiciary, he said adding that nobody tried to find out who got the banners made.

The SC judge said Pakistan would not have been split into two, if the oath was not transgressed.

He said the states could not control the expression of opinion in the technological era. However, he said the reporters doing vlogging have an economic interest too therefore they should maintain balance in their comments.

Justice Minallah said he did not consider himself worthy of telling a reporter what his ethics were.

However, he advised the journalists that revealing the identity of a child or woman or misreporting something was a violation of the journalism’s ethics, he said adding that he learnt a great deal of journalism from court reporters.

“When the matter of 18th constitutional amendment was raised, many forces were against it. A reporter asked me, what will the Supreme Court do about the 18th Amendment? I replied ‘in my opinion, the SC should not interfere in the constitutional amendment’,” he said.

The apex court judge said he had said he would resign if the 18th amendment was annulled and the next day news was published that “Athar Minallah has threatened the court”.

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Senior lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan asked him to do something against the news, but he said no that’s what he had said, he added.

Citing former Ugandan president and the modern world history’s most brutal dictator, Idi Amin, Justice Minallah said, “A society is ruined, if someone gags freedom of expression like Idi Amin.”

Court sentences man to 3 years in jail over marital rape

A man was sentenced to three years in jail after he was found guilty of having non-consensual sex with his wife which is a punishable act under Section 377 (unnatural offences) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Additional Sessions Judge (South) Ashraf Hussain Khowaja announced the reserved judgment after recording evidence and final arguments from both the defence and prosecution sides.

He sentenced the convict named Javed to three-year rigorous imprisonment and ordered him to pay a Rs30,000 fine. If he fails to pay the fine, he would have to undergo an additional one month of simple imprisonment.

“From a perusal of evidence brought at the trial by the prosecution, it appears that the victim has fully established a commission of sodomy with her by the accused being her husband,” the judge observed.

“Though the victim/complainant contradicted some facts relating to the period of her stay with the accused, putting her signature on the memo of site inspection at PS, suffering from disease of piles and her age which are immaterial facts which would not be fatal to the prosecution case,” he added.

The judge noted the medical evidence supported the ocular version. On the other hand, he said the accused failed to establish “enmity” that her wife loved somebody else and therefore she implicated him falsely. The convict’s sisters who appeared as defence witnesses failed even to disclose the name of the alleged paramour of the victim, he added.

The victim testified that her husband would commit sodomy with her despite her attempts to stop him. About two months after their marriage, she informed her mother-in-law, who didn’t say anything to him, she said, adding that then she disclosed her ordeal to her sister and brother, after which she lodged an FIR against her husband on November 23, 2022.

Advocate Bahzad Akbar of the Legal Aid Society, who represented the complainant, contended that sodomy falls within the definition of rape and marital rape in this case after an amendment brought to Section 375 of the Pakistan Penal Code in 2021.

He said that the woman’s testimony and medical evidence corroborated the charges against the accused, requesting the judge to punish Javed as per the law.

“I am not sure about other provinces but this is certainly the first such conviction over marital rape in Sindh following the amendment,” he told The News.

He added there are no known convictions on charges of marital rape in the country. An FIR had been lodged under Section 377 of the PPC at the Chakiwara police station on the woman’s complaint.