Dr Martin Luther King once said, "Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere." In Pakistan, the laws are tailor-made for the influential and the legal system treats you according to the worth of your bank account or your connections in the corridors of power.
This was proven once again on Thursday as the Supreme Court of Pakistan announced its verdict regarding the land scam of property tycoon Malik Riaz Hussain and his housing society Bahria Town.
The court accepted Bahria Town's offer for the land it unlawfully acquired in Karachi and settled for a fine of 460 billion rupees (US$3.3 billion), which it was given seven years to pay.
In May last year, a three-member bench of the Supreme Court declared the allotment of land in Malir, a town within the city of Karachi, to Bahria Town to be illegal. However, with Riaz at the helm of the affairs of Bahria Town, no one was expecting that he would be put behind bars, as he enjoys connections both in civil administration and the military establishment, and the wealth he possesses is unimaginable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeX_HHHSK5M
The sale at a low price of hundreds of hectares of land to Bahria Town by the Sindh provincial government is a case of greed and exploitation. If it was not enough that Bahria Town encroached on lands near this area and illegally constructed a road there as well.
This decision of the honorable court has set a very dangerous precedent, as it implies that if you are rich and influential in the corridors of power, you can easily get away with improprieties by merely paying a fine.
The other thing is that the courts are meant to interpret the law and dispense justice, but after settling a deal with Riaz and his housing society, the judiciary has raised another fundamental question: If the courts are here to settle matters instead of dispensing justice, then what is the National Accountability Bureau doing? Is the NAB supposed to make plea-bargain deals with the culprits?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQsFluk4oA4
In any case, this was the last chance to bring Malik Riaz to justice, and with him probably many others in the power corridors would have been exposed for helping him build the largest housing society in Pakistan
Much to the expectations of the Pakistani people, other than Dawn, no media group highlighted the latest Supreme Court verdict regarding Bahria Town as doing so would mean losing handsome advertising revenue for both print and electronic media.
Not even a single TV channel dared to interview Riaz, even as they conduct interviews of politicians or bureaucrats and term them "culprits" without proof or a verdict from any court of law, but since it was Malik Riaz, who not only enjoys good connections with the civil administration but also with the establishment and only hires retired senior officers from the armed services, no one in the media conducted a talk show on how people's money was looted and how he along with the Sindh government misused their powers.
Since Riaz has been given seven years to pay a fine of 460 billion rupees by the court and NAB has been barred from filing any reference against Riaz or the Sindh government officials in this case, one wonders why all those sitting behind bars for much less serious crimes should not be given a chance to make a deal with the system and roam freely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1aIuHzWE7c
This has been a fundamental problem of Pakistan, that there is no rule of law and influential people always find relief in the forms of low penalties or outright pardons.
One wonders who will make sure that Riaz or Bahria Town actually pay the fine in seven years, as it is a long time and many of the judges will no longer be on the bench, and neither will be the current government.
The apex court may have kept in view the people who bought the plots from Bahria Town in Karachi, or probably, like always, Riaz got help from the invisible quarters. Whatever the case is, in either scenario justice has been denied, and this will not help the honorable judiciary that is still struggling to get out of the toxic legacy of ex-chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar.
Nisar these days is traveling abroad with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf legislators and proving his critics right that he disqualified former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to pave the way for Imran Khan. So if Malik Riaz had to be freed, the judiciary first should have chosen not to hear the Bahria Town Karachi case, as by any standard of law, justice has not been dispensed here.
The state, in fact, continues to differentiate between the haves and the have-nots, as there are thousands of prisoners waiting for their cases to be heard on petty crimes of fraud while Bahria Town and Malik Riaz were given relief by the highest court in this land-grabbing case despite the evidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_H5XAXgja8
For many pseudo-intellectuals, this is a good decision because it will allow the real-estate sector to grow and will raise 460 billion rupees for the national exchequer.
When legal decisions are based on economics rather than law and the constitution, and if this is the yardstick for the delivery of justice, we will never see the big guns involved in scams and frauds brought to justice because of the benefits they bring to the economy at the expense of the people.
The problem lies with the intellect of this country that is unable to understand the miseries of common men and perhaps does not want to go into the details of how the whole empire of Malik Riaz was built on greed, exploitation and grabbing both private and government land at a very low cost. But beyond the Riaz case itself, this inept, rotten and manipulative social order is responsible for discrimination among the crimes and criminals due to their financial standings and connections in power corridors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o63ho6Qiqbw
What a hypocritical system of double standards, where a thrice-elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, can be disqualified only on the basis of assumptions and is still waiting for his appeals to be heard in the courts because he is being seen as a threat to the powers that be, while an offender whose crime was established by the highest court itself remains free by paying a fine – and a small one at that, compared with what he has earned through corrupt practices.