IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PAKISTAN

(Appellate Jurisdiction)

PRESENT:
Mr. Justice Mian Saqib Nisar
Mr. Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa

Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014

(Against the order dated 04.02.2014 passed by the Lahore High
Court, Lahore in Criminal Miscellaneous No. 158-B of 2014)

Muhammad Shakeel
…Petitioner
versus
The State, etc.
… Respondents

For the petitioner: Rana Shakeel Ahmad Khan, ASC

For the State: Ch. Zubair Ahmad Farooq, Additional

Prosecutor-General, Punjab

For respondent No. 2: Mr. Adnan Shuja Butt, ASC

Date of hearing: 20.03.2014

ORDER

Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, J.: Cricket and judicial decision

making may not have much in common except that there is an
umpire in the game of cricket deciding ‘appeals’ and judging
various issues arising during the progress of the game and there
may be some judges sitting in their courtrooms who may
sometimes be tempted to hit the ball over the boundary rope.
Likeness of a judge to an umpire in a game of cricket has already
been alluded to by none other than Lord Denning in his judgment
delivered in the case of Jones v. National Coal Board [(1957) 2 Q.B.
55]. His lordship had observed that “Even in England, however, a
Judge is not a mere umpire to answer the question “How’s that?”.
His object, above all, is to find out the truth, and to do justice
according to law; -------”. Another common factor between the two
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 2

is that both cricket and judicial decision making are played/

practised by gentlemen, and now by noble ladies as well. All of us
know that cricket has moulded itself over time and has adapted to
the requirements of the changing times but judges, being
conservative by nature and tradition, have so far been slow in such
transformation or adaptation. Keeping pace with the requirements
of the modern times as well as constraints of time concomitant
thereto a five-day test match in cricket is giving way to a one-day
match and even to a blitz called T20 and although Garry Sobers,
Hanif Muhammad and Sunil Gavaskar are still idolized for their
marathon efforts and long hauls in batting yet the present day
heroes are the likes of Shahid Afridi who, notwithstanding the
shots they play or the techniques they employ, are applauded for
their obsessive, if not neurotic, hitting and for scoring as many
runs as possible within the shortest possible time. As against that
the judges are generally still sticking to their old and archaic styles
of writing their orders and judgments which is causing a
disconnect between the judiciary and the litigant public because
the decision making is slow, long and out of pace with the influx of
cases asking for decision, if not out of sync with the expectations of
majority of the stakeholders. We have found the present case to be
a classic example of such a disconnect as despite about one
hundred and eighty thousand cases pending and clamouring for
decision before the Lahore High Court, Lahore the learned Judge-
in-Chamber of the said Court had indulged in the luxury of writing
as many as twelve pages for dismissing the petitioner’s application
for bail which matter was merely an interim matter pertaining only
to regulating custody of the petitioner during his trial. We feel that
the matter could have been decided by the learned Judge-in-
Chamber through a much shorter order saving the Court’s
precious time for attending to other similar matters of urgency.

2. In the background of this Court’s accumulated experience

over a long period of time and the wisdom gathered through the
same we feel that time has come for breaking away from the
attitudes and approaches of the past and for out of the box
solutions to situations which apparently have no traditional
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 3

remedies. In short, we feel that time has come for a game changer
and the present petition may be utilized as the watershed. It has
appeared to us to be safer to start the proposed judicial
repositioning with decisions of applications for bail and then to
build on the same on the basis of the experience gathered. With
this object and motivation in mind we propose that in future,
unless the necessities of the case warrant otherwise, the following
shorter format for deciding an application for bail may be adopted
by all the courts below:

(i) Without reproducing the particulars and

contents of the FIR in detail an order should state
directly and briefly the allegation levelled by the
prosecution against the accused-petitioner. The details
and particulars of the FIR would already be available
in the application for bail itself or the same can be
gathered from a copy of the FIR attached with such
application.

(ii) The details of the arguments addressed by the

learned counsel for the parties may not be recorded in
the order. It is to be presumed that the court
concerned must have heard and attended to all the
arguments addressed and the submissions made
before it and if one is to look for such arguments the
same may be found mentioned in the application for
bail. It may be well to remember that an order granting
or refusing bail is merely an interim order and the
same is not to be equated with a judgment.

(iii) The order should state the reasons for granting

or refusing bail to the accused-petitioner as briefly and
clearly as possible in the following format:

(a) -------
(b) -------
(c) -------
(d) -------

It may not be lost sight of that brevity is the soul of

wit.

(iv) The order should record the terms of bail, if

applicable.

Adopting the said format we now proceed to decide the present

petition.
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 4

3. Through this petition Muhammad Shakeel petitioner has

sought leave to appeal against the order dated 04.02.2014 passed
by a learned Judge-in-Chamber of the Lahore High Court, Lahore
in Criminal Miscellaneous No. 158-B of 2014 whereby post-arrest
bail was refused to him in case FIR No. 274 registered at Police
Station Hanjarwal, District Lahore on 20.04.2012 in respect of
offences under sections 148, 302 and 149, PPC.

4. After hearing the learned counsel for the parties and going
through the record we have observed as follows:

(a) The allegation leveled against the petitioner in

the FIR was that at the stated date, time and place he
and his co-accused had resorted to firing at the
deceased but the petitioner had not been attributed
any specific injury and the allegation leveled against
him in the FIR was couched in generalized and
collective terms.

(b) Admittedly nothing had been recovered from the

petitioner’s custody during the investigation so as to
confirm the allegation of firing leveled against him.

(c) The investigating officer had concluded that the

allegation leveled by the complainant party against the
petitioner did not stand established during the
investigation and as a consequence of such conclusion
the petitioner had been opined to be innocent.

(d) According to the FIR the complainant and the

other eyewitnesses mentioned therein were available at
the relevant time just outside the complainant's house
but a bare look at the site-plan of the place of
occurrence shows that the complainant and the
eyewitnesses could not have seen the incident in issue
while standing outside the house of the complainant,
particularly when it had never been claimed by them
in the FIR and in the statements made before the
police under section 161, Cr.P.C. that they had
followed the deceased and the accused party to the
place of occurrence.

(e) The investigation of this case has already been

finalized and a Challan has been submitted and, thus,
physical custody of the petitioner is not required at
this stage for the purposes of investigation.
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 5

5. For what has been observed above we have found the case
against the petitioner to be a case calling for further inquiry into
his guilt within the purview of subsection (2) of section 497,
Cr.P.C. This petition is, therefore, converted into an appeal and the
same is allowed and consequently the petitioner is admitted to bail
subject to furnishing bail bond in the sum of Rs. 1,00,000/-
(Rupees one hundred thousand only) with two sureties each in the
like amount to the satisfaction of the learned trial court.

Judge

Judge
Lahore
20.03.2014
Approved for reporting.
Yasin