Qisas & diyat laws
IN case after case of murder and severe bodily harm to innocent people, the perpetrators are often given a clean chit by Pakistan’s courts. The accused, even more emboldened, returns…
The force of law
Pakistan has the misfortune of being periodically bashed by the international media. Recently, it has been the uproar over the revival of the death penalty. The European Union, UN Office…
Laws of punishment
The retrogressive slide in Pakistan just got more pronounced with the Farzana Parveen case. The 25-year-old pregnant woman bludgeoned to death in front of the Lahore High Court fuelled the…
Islamabad needs special care
(A human settlement is completed in countless phases) — An old gem of folk wisdom NOT many tears were shed at the abolition of the Capital Affairs Division (CAD) of…
The love of hanging
Pakistan chose to vote against the recent resolution in the United Nations General Assembly that had called for a global moratorium on the death penalty and was adopted by a…
The Pakistan presidency
The election of a new president of Pakistan having been completed, efforts should now be concentrated on securing for the presidency the dignity that it is supposed to be guaranteed…
Pardon the poultry
SURPRISINGLY, while we have cherry-picked parts of globalisation like Black Friday sales and Valentine’s Day celebrations, we have yet to get on to the Thanksgiving bandwagon. Before anyone accuses us…
Half of a man
DECADES ago, I was watching a documentary in which a foreign journalist was talking with a young man in Afghanistan. The interviewee was probably an Afghan Talib and the question…
Justice and the FIR
While the poor in Pakistan have always been quite painfully aware of how lethal a first information report (FIR) can be, it is the elite who only learn of its…
Buying your path to freedom
“I can’t believe they can get away with this. I’m toast, right? They’re going to drag me into this prison’s courtyard and stone me to death, aren’t they?,” said Raymond…
