Police officers walk past Pakistan’s Supreme Court building, in Islamabad, Pakistan, April 6, 2022. REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
The Supreme Court has directed the provincial and Islamabad police to ensure that no reference to caste, tribe, biradari, conversion status or any classificatory or derogatory expression is mentioned with the names of complainants, accused, victims or witnesses in FIRs, arrest memoranda, recovery memoranda, investigation reports, challans or any other records.
Hearing a criminal case, a three-judge bench headed by Justice Muhammad Hasham Kakar cautioned that any deviation from this rule would be permissible only if the investigating officer, for bona fide investigative reasons directly related to the offense and recorded in writing, believes that such identification is strictly necessary.
“The Registrar of this Court will send copies of this judgment to all Inspector Generals of Police of all provinces and Islamabad Capital Territory as well as to the respective Home Secretaries/Chief Commissioners for immediate compliance and distribution to all field formations,” reads the six-page judgment written by Justice Kakar.
“We are deeply disheartened to see that society continues to determine whether a human being deserves respect based solely on the nature of his profession, rather than his inherent dignity,” the ruling states.
The ruling indicates that human dignity is not a privilege that can be granted; It is an inalienable right that is inherent to every individual by virtue of their humanity, as established 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 used as derogatory remarks against members of that particular caste,” the judgment said.
“We are concerned about a society that depends on cleanliness to survive, but that dehumanizes those who make it possible. Those who clean up society’s waste are described as ‘dirty,’ and those who make cities livable are seen as lives that are inherently less worthy of respect.”
The court said that the moral failure of the social order itself is revealed by a system that dehumanizes individuals to earn a living by performing sanitation or similar tasks, rather than the filth of workers.
“Dignity, respect and equality are the rights of every person, regardless of occupation, before the law and society. Pakistan’s international human rights obligations serve to reinforce this assertion,” the judgment underlines.
The court referred to 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 require equality before the law and protection against discrimination on the grounds of religion or social origin.
The court said the use of any qualifying expression that marks a convert as “new” or different is not sanctioned by Islamic teachings or the law. “Any term that simply identifies the caste or social origin to which a person belongs and which, in themselves, do not imply anything intrinsically reprehensible.”
He noted that they become objectionable when used to demean, stigmatize or portray a person as belonging to a lower social status.
“The term ‘Nau Muslim Sheikh’ (or similar expressions such as ‘Dhobi’, ‘Naahi’, ‘Jamadar’, ‘Bhangi’ or ‘Dam’ occasionally used in police records) appears to be a derogatory or coded reference implying a stigmatized or lower caste status,” the court said.
