Within the shadowed halls of the Lahore High Court, generations of lawyers have beheld the unfolding of valiant jurisprudence. For more than seventy years, this Court has stood as the vigilant sentinel of constitutionalism, forging a body of law that gleams with resilience and principle even amidst the fiercest storms of political tyranny. It has branded dictators as usurpers, stayed the unchecked hand of executive excess and breathed new life into the Constitution when it lay gasping for air. This Court has ever been a crucible where the ideals of democracy and judicial independence were tested in fire. Its judges rose as symbols of valour. Their judgments were not mere legal pronouncements but oracles of defiance hurled against oppression, echoes of conscience resounding in an age of suppression and fear.
Conversely, the very institution that once thundered as a guardian of liberty now stands subdued in apathy and smothered in silence, its voice shackled by the stealthy corrosion of judicial independence.
The decay reveals itself most cruelly in that merciless spectre known as delayed justice. We are all well acquainted with the maxim: justice delayed is justice denied. Rarely, however, has its cruelty revealed itself as nakedly as in the case of Qasim Khokhar, a humble worker of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. Convicted by the Anti-Terrorism Court, Gujranwala, in the May 9 case, his conviction rested on flimsy grounds and a misreading of evidence. While his appeal, filed alongside those of fifty others, gathered dust in the labyrinth of neglect, Khokhar languished in prison for over eighteen months.
As Dickens mourned in Bleak House: “In Chancery, the law’s delays are the grave of hope.” In Khokhar’s case, that grave was dug not in metaphor but in flesh and blood. One bleak day, he died in custody. When his body was returned to his family, still shackled. Those chains became a grotesque emblem of judicial apathy. He died not because the law decreed it, but because the Lahore High Court could not be bothered to lift its majestic finger. His death was not an accident; it was a slow-motion judicial execution carried out by indifference.
Another grievous decline lies in the treatment of habeas corpus petitions. Once regarded as the lifeblood of liberty, these petitions compelled the mighty to answer for the disappeared, forcing agencies to produce citizens whisked away in the dead of night. For decades, the Lahore High Court was a refuge for journalists, students, activists and political workers. At the very least, the Court could demand: bring the person before us. Habeas corpus was more than a writ; it was the judiciary’s moral roar against tyranny, a manifestation of its commitment to the spirit of the Constitution.
When a judge flinches from holding the powerful accountable, what hope remains for the weak and voiceless?
Today, however, it has been reduced to a hollow ritual burdened by the sterile letter of the law. Petitions are dismissed on flimsy technicalities, adjourned without urgency or lost in procedural quicksand. In one recent case where I appeared as counsel, an unconfirmed female judge even refused to issue notice to the Secretary of Defence in a disappearance matter, apparently unaware that the office is held by a retired army General, not a serving one. The tragedy here is twofold. First, she ignored the settled principle that the petitioner sought to summon the Secretary of Defence in his official capacity, not as a General. Second, she again ignored the settled legal principle that even serving officers can be summoned under exceptional circumstances. This was a chilling abdication of judicial power. When a judge flinches from holding the powerful accountable, what hope remains for the weak and voiceless?
Edmund Burke famously warned, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” In the Lahore High Court, the good men are not inactive by choice; they have been rendered powerless and irrelevant. Yes, one can see a pattern of sidelining of judges whom the executive despises. Instead of being entrusted with consequential cases, such judges are exiled to distant benches or, if kept in Lahore, assigned dockets devoid of significance.
Justice Shahid Karim offers perhaps the most glaring example. A jurist of formidable intellect and uncommon resolve, he is remembered for convicting General Pervez Musharraf of high treason under Article 6, for striking down Pakistan’s archaic 150-year-old sedition law and for ruling that the Election Commission cannot whimsically handpick judges for election tribunals. Yet, in the past year, not a single case of real consequence has been marked to him. Justice Asim Hafeez, whose recent judgment unseated the Chairman of NADRA, a retired general, for unlawful appointment, is rarely seen hearing cases involving executive overreach, especially in political matters.
Justice Amjad Rafiq, who passed bold orders at the height of executive excess and thwarted Punjab’s misuse of preventive detention powers, stands as another example of courage sidelined. There are others whose names could be listed, but space does not permit. These are judges whose independence should have elevated them, yet their courage has been rewarded with invisibility and irrelevance. Meanwhile, junior judges, often inexperienced and full of restraint, are entrusted with legal matters of monumental importance.
A Court once celebrated as the guardian of liberty now risks decaying into the grim warden of its own silence
Recently, the Supreme Court in Raja Amer Khan v. Federation of Pakistan made it clear that decisions regarding bench constitution, transfer of cases and issuance of rosters cannot rest solely in the hands of the Chief Justice. Transparency, collective responsibility and accountability are essential to prevent arbitrariness. Yet the Lahore High Court has turned discretion into a weapon of control. Case allocation leaves only one reasonable impression: politically sensitive petitions are deliberately relegated to safe and cautious hands, critical issues are delayed into irrelevance and courageous judges are exiled into silence.
The comparison with history makes this decline even more painful. In the 1950s and 1960s, when constitutionalism was a fragile sapling, the Lahore High Court laid the foundations for legality in the face of executive power. In the Asma Jilani case, Chief Justice Hamood-ur-Rehman and Justice Yaqub Ali Khan thundered that Yahya Khan was nothing but a usurper. In the late 1980s, Federation v. Aitzaz Ahsan affirmed the citizens’ right to peaceful political activity at a time when dissent was equated with treason. These were not ordinary rulings; they were milestones in Pakistan’s legal and political evolution.
Even when controversial judgments such as the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Trial scarred the Court’s history, the institution still retained the resilience to produce decisions of defiance. The Lahore High Court was long known for its dual legacy of brilliance and betrayal. Today, however, it tilts toward only a darker legacy: one of outrageous indifference and silence. The menace is insidious; it creeps silently through unchecked discretion, inordinate delays, habeas petitions dissolving into dust, insensitivity to fundamental rights and the sidelining of brave voices within its ranks. The transformation is as tragic as it is ironic: a Court once celebrated as the guardian of liberty now risks decaying into the grim warden of its own silence.
Seemingly, Lahore High Court, once a roaring lion that defied tyrants, now lingers as a shackled ghost, haunting the corridors it once illuminated. Prima facie it has chosen the path of silence. Whether the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court recognises it or not, the cost is immense. The societal fallout has been catastrophic. Failure to act decisively has transformed state authorities into mafias that operate with impunity. Arbitrary detentions have multiplied, and opposition parties, especially PTI, find themselves deprived of legal recourse in the Punjab.