EDITORIAL: For 20 years, two innocent men languished in the shadow of the gallows while the state insisted it was delivering justice.
The 2005 PIDC bomb blast case now stands as a glaring indictment of investigative incompetence and a criminal justice system so flawed and politicised that such travesties no longer shock the public conscience. It goes without saying that such failures condemn innocent citizens to a lifetime of fear and erode public faith in the institutions that are meant to protect them.
To briefly sum up the facts, the accused in the case, brothers Mangla Khan and Aziz Khan, were arrested for the 2005 bombing that killed four and injured 21, and were sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court in 2007, a verdict upheld by the Sindh High Court in 2020.
Last month, the Supreme Court overturned their sentences, and the detailed judgment released this past week exposes how the men were made convenient scapegoats for a deeply compromised investigation. From the inexplicable failure to secure and present crucial CCTV footage to the courts, to witness testimonies that could not stand scrutiny, a dubious identification parade and confessional statements that did not meet the test of voluntariness, the Court noted that these grave gaps point to a possible deliberate suppression of evidence that could have cleared the accused.
The Supreme Court’s judgment goes beyond exposing institutional failure. It presses the relevant legislatures to confront a crucial, long-ignored vacuum, i.e., the absence of a legal framework that compensates and rehabilitates citizens destroyed by miscarriages of justice.
In this particular case, the accused spent the prime of their lives – two decades – behind bars. This is no aberration. In a country where police investigations are routinely derailed by inadequate resources, outdated technologies, poor training or sheer incompetence and corruption, and where the justice system moves at a glacial pace, such outcomes are tragically all too common.
The Court’s call for legislation that helps restore dignity and offers restitution to those the state has wronged is, therefore, entirely apt. Beyond providing monetary compensation to victims and ensuring accountability of those who engineer investigative failures, such a law must also provide comprehensive support in the form of psychological counselling, medical care, educational and vocational training, legal aid to clear records, and employment and housing assistance.
Furthermore, formal acknowledgment of wrongdoing, social support for affected families and oversight mechanisms to drive systemic reform are essential to help victims rebuild their lives.
The tragedy, however, here is that even the most comprehensive law aiding the victims of miscarriages of justice cannot prevent wrongful convictions. This is because there is a profound flaw that lies at the heart of our criminal justice system: the rampant misuse of anti-terrorism courts (ATCs) and related anti-terror mechanisms by successive governments.
Recent decades have seen ATCs being routinely weaponised against political opponents exercising their right to peaceful protest, eroding the courts’ legitimate purpose. There have been numerous instances of anti-terrorism clauses being misapplied against political dissidents, resulting in their convictions by ATCs.
When the administrative machinery prioritises political persecution over combating genuine terrorism, the effectiveness of these courts is inevitably compromised, leaving real suspects free and creating a vacuum in which terrorism thrives.
Blaming foreign hands alone for the surge in the incidents of terror ignores the state’s own role in creating conditions that such forces exploit to devastating effect. The fact of the matter is that miscarriages of justice can only be prevented if anti-terror mechanisms are strictly deployed for their original mandate, and not for political ends. The state must restore integrity to the anti-terror justice system or the cycle of injustice will persist, undermining the rule of law, public trust and the country’s security.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.