Khyber News

ISLAMABAD: The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary during hearing of the recently promulgated contempt of law case remarked that courts are widely favored if an impending decision is ruled out in favor of the strong and vice versa. 

The Supreme Court Monday resumed the hearing of petitions against the recently passed contempt of court law 2012. 

A five member judge bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and comprising Justice Shakirullah Jan, Justice Khilji Arif Husain, Justice Jawad S Khawaja and Justice Tassadduq Husain Jilani was hearing 27 identical petitions challenging the Contempt of Court Act, 2012.

During the hearing, petitioner Rana Mohammad Jameel was presenting his arguments before the bench.

Earlier on Friday, the Supreme Court had observed that letting go powerful individuals under immunity would give rise to a trend of flouting court orders and consider them mere pieces of paper. 

The CJP said that if one individual was free to let go, others would also insist for the same fate. He said “letting influential persons slip under the cover of immunity from prosecution would make the court venerable willful flouting of orders”.

Earlier, Barrister Zafarullah Khan had argued that absurdity can’t be attributed to the legislature for enacting the Contempt of Court Act 2012 though it appears that a draftsman representing 180 people doesn’t know what exactly the law of the land is.

He said the contempt law was against the ground norm of the Constitution: The Objectives Resolution. It is a cornerstone of Pakistan’s legal edifice; it is a bond that binds the Nation and as a document from which the Constitution must draw its inspiration; it guarantees that no one is above the law; hence, no classification is allowed as done by Section 3 of the new act. The basic concept underlying this unalterable principle of sovereignty is that the entire body politic becomes a trustee for the discharge of sovereign functions. It is under this system that the government becomes a government of laws and not of men, for, no one is above the law, he said.