Police officers walk past the Supreme Court of Pakistan building, in Islamabad, Pakistan April 6, 2022. REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
The Supreme Court has directed the police in the provinces and in Islamabad shall ensure that no reference to caste, tribe, biradari, conversion status or any classificatory or derogatory expression is mentioned with the names of complainant, accused persons, victims or witnesses in FIRs, arrest memos, recovery memos, investigation reports, challans or any other records.
Hearing a criminal case, a three judge bench led by Justice Muhammad Hasham Kakar warned that any departure from this rule would be permissible only if the investigating officer, for bona fide investigative reasons directly connected with the offence and recorded in writing, believes such identification to be strictly necessary.
“The Registrar of this Court shall transmit copies of this judgment to all inspectors general of police of all the provinces and Islamabad Capital Territory as well as to the respective home secretaries/chief commissioner for immediate compliance and circulation to all field formations,” says six-page judgment authored by Justice Kakar.
“We are deeply disheartened to witness that society continues to determine whether a human being is deserving of respect based solely on the nature of their profession, rather than on their inherent dignity,” the judgment stated.
The judgment notes that human dignity is not a privilege that can be bestowed; it is an inalienable right that is inherent to every individual by virtue of their humanity, as stated in Article 14 of the Constitution.
“It is noteworthy that the terms bhangi, chura, morassi, jamadar, dam, and musalli are no longer used to define a caste but are instead used as derogatory remarks against the members of that particular caste,” the judgment said.
“We are apprehensive about a society that relies on cleanliness for survival, yet dehumanises those who make it possible. Those who clean society’s waste are described as ‘dirty’, and those who make cities liveable are regarded as lives that are inherently less deserving of respect.”
The court said that the moral failure of the social order itself is revealed by a system that dehumanises individuals for earning a living by performing sanitation or similar tasks, rather than the dirtiness of the workers.
“Dignity, respect, and equality are the rights of every person, irrespective of their occupation, in the eyes of the law and society. Pakistan’s international human rights obligations serve to bolster this assertion,” the judgment emphasised.
The court referred to the articles 1 and 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), articles 2 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and Article 3 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which mandate equality before the law and protection against discrimination on the basis of religion or social origin.
The court said that the use of any qualifying expression that marks a convert as “new” or otherwise distinct neither has sanction in Islamic teachings, nor in law. “Any term merely identifying the caste or social origin to which a person belongs and, in themselves, carry nothing inherently reprehensible.”
It noted those become objectionable when used to demean, stigmatise, or portray a person as one belonging to an inferior social status.
“The term ‘Nau Muslim Sheikh’ (or similar expressions such as ‘Dhobi’, ‘Naahi’, ‘Jamadar’, ‘Bhangi’ or ‘Dam’ which are occasionally used in police records) appears to be a derogatory or coded reference that implies a stigmatised or lower caste status,” the court said.
