LAHORE: The Lahore High Court held that Form 4 which prescribes summon for the courts must to be printed in English and Urdu also as majority of the people in our society are unable to read English.
The court directed the office to send a copy of the judgment to the federal and the provincial law secretaries for appropriate action in this regard and observed that right to fair trial is a fundamental right guaranteed to all and not just English literate persons in this society.
The petitioner, jail inmate Amar Jeet Singh, had alleged violation of his fundamental right enshrined in Article 10A on the basis that he was neither served a notice in the prescribed Form nor a copy of the plaint was ever delivered to him to enable him to prepare and file his application for leave to defend.
The court allowed the petition and asked the petitioner to file his leave to defend in the court of additional district and sessions court within 10 days.
The court said the Supreme Court as well as this Court had already adopted the practice of serving various notices in Urdu language. The court held that since service of summon in prescribed Form is a mandatory requirement of law, it would only be in consonance with the object and in conformity with the Constitution when summon is prescribed in bilingual form i.e. English and Urdu.
The court said the summon in the Form 4 assumes that the defendant on whom the notice is served is able to read English or that he has assistance available to him to convey the content of the same although he may not have such assistance available to them, resultantly, the purpose of the summon currently prescribed runs an obvious risk of being defeated.
The petitioner was resident of Muridke but confined in District Jail Shaikhupura where he was neither allowed to contact any of his relatives nor engage a counsel.
The court said, "Although the petitioner was informed by the court when produced before it on December 19, 2020, that he could file his application for leave to defend the suit against him within 10 days, however, the order does not reflect that he was even allowed any opportunity to contact any of his relatives or any lawyer".
On January 05, 2021, the petitioner was produced before the court from jail and when he did not file any application for leave to defend the suit, his right to seek leave was closed mechanically in a slipshod manner.
The court said the principle of equality of arms has been manifestly violated in the instant case and hence the impugned order is void to abridging the petitioner's fundamental right of fair trial.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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