Privatizing the crime?

Some months back, a young girl whose father is a Bank Branch Manager married a young man of another tribe living in the neighbourhood. The police tricked both the youngsters who were then picked up by the relatives waiting outside the police station and then brutally murdered them after hours of horrible torture.
The father of the girl wanted to save his daughter but could not stand up to peer pressure from his co-tribals. Both the murders will go unpunished even if the murderers are brought to trial because the victims' family will have forgiven them. The law on Qisas ensures that. This happened in Sanghar.
Then in Multan, there was a case where a young girl by the name Afsheen Musarrat died under mysterious circumstances and then was quietly buried. Her body was disinterred and the post-mortem report suggested that more than one person had strangulated her. Her father, a lawyer by profession, confessed to the killing but the police suspects that there were more participants to the gruesome murder. If this case goes for trial, it too is bound to be compromised at the instance of a Wali. Obviously, the criminals and the Walis are so closely related that they would much rather not suffer another death in the family.
There was another report where following the principle of an 'eye for an eye' Justice Syed Afzal Sharif Kazmi of Anti-Terrorism Court, Bahawalpur, sentenced a person to be blinded by acid as a retribution in a matching punishment. The accused and his four accomplices had thrown acid on two women in which one of them lost her eye sight.
The Court further ordered that the acid would be administered in the eyes of the accused in the presence of a Medical Officer at the Bahawalpur Stadium. Which doctor would consent to be a witness to this brutalizing act of blinding a person only to satisfy the blind brutal instinct of a judge, and that too without violating the Hippocratic oath that he took on graduation? The victims in this case too might be persuaded to forgive the perpetrators of the crime under the law of Diyat.
There was another case few months back where four murderers of Attock were saved from gallows through the mediation of Nawab of Kalabagh, when the murderers' family surrendered eight of their minor girls to be taken into marriage by members of the aggrieved party, some of them old and decrepit. The opinion of the girls in question mattered little. Is it any different from the US where about a century back children born to a slave were sold by their white owners on auction block in front of their screaming desperate mothers and fathers who could only look on helplessly?
All these cases which received wider press coverage than a large number of cases which go unreported are closely affected by the Law of Diyat. The Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, which had been kept in force by invoking the president's power to re-issue it every four months, was formally enacted into law in April 1997. It amended 40 sections of Pakistan Penal Code from 299 to 338. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) criticized the manner in which the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance of 1990 was finally enacted into law in 1997: "The relevant bill was rushed through Parliament without debate and the President gave his assent forthwith. The opposition's plea that this important and controversial measure needed fullest possible discussion was ignored."
This law prescribed five more punishments to an equal number available under the previous law. These punishments include: Qisas, Diyat, Arsh, Daman and Taazir. All offences relating to body including hurt, murder etc. is now subject to compromise at the stance of the victims Wali. Amended section 311 gives court the right not to compound the offence of Qisas in case the court perceives 'Fasad-Fil-Arz'. This will include the past conduct of the offender, (not relevant under the earlier law of evidence) or the brutal or shocking manner in which the offence was committed which may be outrageous to the public conscience.
Under the laws inherited from the British it was the State, which was party to a criminal case on behalf of the victim. It was in effect the Wali of all the citizens of the state. Serious offences including murder were not compoundable at all, not even with the permission of the court. Crime was not a private matter but one between the accused and the State. The aggrieved party could not under the law forgive the accused. But under the Law of Diyat it can.
The victims of the crime are generally weaker than the criminals. Prosecution is flawed and the witnesses mostly tutored. In case of murder the Wali (the heir of the victim) and the government (if there is no heir) can waive the right of Qisas, provided this right is waived voluntarily and without duress, to the satisfaction of the court. Supposing A kills the brother of his wife, and the criminal's wife is the only Wali. Can she withstand the pressure or her own desire not to wreck her own not to forgive the killer? A murderer will thus go scot-free. It is very convenient to kill person particularly vulnerable women and claim compromise between the murderer and the Wali.
The new law provides that where victim has more than one Wali, any one of them may waive his right of Qisas, provided that the Wali who does not waive the right of Qisas shall be entitled to his share of Diyat (compensation). The waiver of the right of Qisas against one offender shall not affect the right of Qisas against the other. The law prohibits giving a female in marriage for compounding an offence. But then the Wali will not mention the consideration including female(s) offered in marriage to claim as a basis for compounding the offence.
In case a Wali is a minor or insane, the Wali of such minor or insane can compound the offence. Imagine a situation where two minor nephews, who are orphaned and one of whom is insane and both of whom would otherwise inherit the property of their father which is now being tended by their uncle and this uncle wants to grab the whole property, he conveniently kills the sane nephew and as guardian of the insane forgives himself.
All these instances are intended to show the miscarriage of justice caused by an ill conceived and ill-considered resort to laws, which are more tribal than Islamic. The name of Islam has been misused to satisfy the misguided sense of tribal justice of our rulers. Crime of murder has been trivialized in the name of Islam. We are rendering no service to Islam or its cause by limiting the scope of this great religion only to pander to the half literate pretensions of the custodians of Islam. To quote great American Martin Luther King 'Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.' Islam was a progressive religion 1400 years back. No more. We are perceived by the world as backward looking, bigoted, dogmatic and a race frozen in times. Lack of education and concomitant lack of understanding are the root causes of our dilemma. It is a great tragedy that we started getting pushed back in time during the longest military dictatorship of medieval Zia ul Haq.
His current successor, a far more civilized and cultured person and stands much taller in comparison has unfortunately chosen to consort with a constituency his military predecessor helped create.