Almost everyday depressing pieces of news are received about the economy, politics and even sports, said Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khan Khosa. He was addressing additional judges belonging to Model Criminal Trial Courts (MCTC) here at Federal Judicial Academy on Wednesday.
"Sometime the nation is told that economy is in ICU and sometime that it has come out of ICU, which is not good news," the Chief Justice said. The Chief Justice stated it is said that a massive amount of money is stuck in the cases related to tax, revenue, and the banking sector in the courts, adding therefore special benches have been set up in the high courts and the Supreme Court for exclusively hearing them.
"We also can't take pride of democracy because the leader of the house and the leader of the opposition are not allowed to speak in the Houses." The good news is also not received from sports, and in the region there are problems in Afghanistan and war clouds are looming over Iran".
However, one segment from where the good news is coming is judiciary. It is the responsibility of the judiciary to provide inexpensive and expeditious justice to the people of Pakistan.
The Chief Justice stated that gender-base violation and child courts will be set up in all districts. The issues related to female violation are either hushed up or do not get fair treatment; therefore, gender-based violation courts will be established. The women in those courts will feel comfortable as the atmosphere will be different from normal courts.
Similarly, the child court will also not look like ordinary courts and the judges and lawyers would not be in uniform and the environment there would be pleasant. The child will feel comfortable, he added.
Justice Khosa stated that Supreme Court of Pakistan has distinction all over the world as it started e-court system. For one week the Supreme Court at the Principal Seat in Islamabad heard the cases through video-link connectivity. All the cases were decided as the lawyers argued through video-link cases from Karachi and no adjournment was granted.
The litigants are very happy with e-court system as it reduced their economic burden. In normal circumstance when a lawyer from Karachi, Lahore or Quetta appears before the apex court in Islamabad then he stays in five-star hotel, uses rented car and has dinner and lunch in expensive hotels. The Chief Justice said from July the e-court will begin at the SC Registry Branch Quetta.
The Chief Justice apprised that a state-of-the-art research centre will be established at the Supreme Court. A search engine has been installed and a few more will be installed in near future. It will comprise three judges of the apex court and seven researchers.
Two judges of the Supreme Court and seven research assistants will be going for training to the USA. This research centre is linked with world renowned research engines. With the effective functioning of this research centre, the desired research material will be a click of a button away," he maintained. Historical records of cases and their judgements would be uploaded to a database accessible to judges everywhere.
The Chief Justice announced that the judicial sector will be making use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to facilitate dispensation of justice. The judges - before deciding their cases - would be able to receive suggestions from the database on what a judgement could be. The system is meant to assess the provided facts, process the information on the basis of already available data of settled cases, before suggesting a possible decision.
"If the decision suggested by the system is different from the judge's own conclusions, at least the judge will be cautious about his verdict," he said, expressing hope that the process would encourage judges to reflect on their decisions and make better judgements using the information available to them.
He also recounted reforms and changes that have been introduced in the judicial sector for this purpose. Results of model courts are incredible. "With full cooperation of all stakeholders of administration of criminal justice system, miraculous things have happened. Now onwards we will be adding one more judge to every district every month and the day is not far when we will have every court as model court in this country," the Chief Justice said.
The Chief Justice said that in the upcoming meeting of the National Judicial (Policy Making) Committee, in which all chief justices of high courts are the members, we will decide to set up model civil trial courts and model trial magistrate courts.
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