Hamid Khan pens book on history of Pakistan’s judiciary
KARACHI: The book, which portrays a lawyer’s account of how superior courts have functioned since the country’s existence, is not only informative but also revealing in many aspects, said former Supreme Court justice Wajihuddin Ahmed.
He said this at the launch of advocate Hamid Khan’s book ‘A history of the judiciary in Pakistan’ at Karachi Press Club on Tuesday evening. Referring to the book, Ahmed said it is more or less a history of judicial response to the successive military interventions.
“Article 19 of the Constitution allows us to do accountability of superior judiciary,” said Munir A Malik, senior lawyer and former attorney-general of Pakistan. He added that it is the demand of contemporary history to appreciate and criticise the superior judiciary in present and not in the past.
He said that 90% of the book is a first person account by Khan of previous judges. “I urge everyone to write their own account of judiciary so that it can be tested,” Malik said, while referring to Khan’s version of the judiciary.
The book contains despair and hope at the same time and reveals how the judiciary has sacrificed their careers and their self, said Faisal Siddiqui, lawyer and co-chair of the Rasheed A Rizvi Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights.
University of Karachi’s Pakistan Study Centre director Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed said we need multiple narratives if we want to live in a democratic society.
“The book is an interesting account of inner working of the judiciary of higher courts,” said former Sindh governor Kamaluddin Azfar.
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