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Society

Wheels of Injustice

A society that allows murder to be settled like a private debt inevitably erodes faith in the rule of law

By Naeem Sadiq | April 2026


Late on a summer night in June 2022, a high-speed SUV driven by the daughter of a High Court judge ran over and killed two employees of a food company in Islamabad. Confident in her father’s judicial acumen and fortified by an unspoken immunity afforded to the elite, she stepped out of the car and walked away from the scene of the accident.

The system safety net kicked in. The police did not register an FIR for many days. A hurried settlement soothed the grievances of one victim’s family, but the other family refused to compromise and resolved to seek justice in a court of law. After struggling and stalling for 3 years, it, too, arrived at the same conclusion that the first family had reached on the first day – accept a settlement, receive compensation, and withdraw the appeal. The case was closed.

In December 2025, we witnessed yet another stark reminder of the callousness of the reckless, spoiled children of the judicial elite. Two innocent women were killed after being run over by the underage son of an Islamabad High Court judge, who was driving an unregistered
V8 Land Cruiser fitted with fake number plates. An out-of-court pardon rapidly hushed up the matter, and the boy was set free without a formal trial.

Instead of sending his son to jail and resigning from his esteemed post, the judge used all his influence and all his threats to coerce a compromise. The episode was a stark reminder of how judicial indifference, if not outright complicity, breeds the familiar ingredients of our decay: a powerful perpetrator and a defenceless victim, a crime driven by reckless entitlement, and a final escape secured through ‘diyat’ or a negotiated settlement.

On 23 February 2026, a speeding car (BKR-525), driven by a reckless, entitled youth, soaked with privilege and arrogance, struck and killed a food delivery rider in DHA Karachi. The killer vehicle displayed an unauthorized ‘Sindh High Court’ plaque, a symbol of privilege that makes all such vehicles beyond the scrutiny of a colonial police force conditioned to defer to elite lawlessness. As expected, and as manipulated, the deceased’s family ‘forgave’ the accused in the name of God. The car driver was never arrested, and the police did not register a case on behalf of the state.

Hundreds of vehicles displaying similar fake ‘Sindh High Court’ plaques or number plates bearing the words “Sindh High Court” can be seen on the streets of Karachi. Many of these vehicles display permanent markings, such as “Advocate, Sindh High Court,” on a green background, which falsely suggests official government status. For years, citizens have petitioned the Sindh High Court and the Sindh Police to curb crimes committed under the guise of the Honourable Courts. Yet the silence of these institutions has been so persistent that it appears less like oversight and more like consent.


Must the courts and judges appear indifferent when crimes are committed in their name or by their close relatives? Does Islam allow the state to remain a silent spectator while wealthy, spoiled, rich, influential escape accountability after killing innocent citizens through out-of-court pardons, coercion, or private settlements? Does Islamic jurisprudence allow such judges to continue serving on the Honourable bench? Would sentencing a judge to prison terms for allowing his underage child to drive be consistent with the Islamic principles?

Effectively cushioning the powerful against the consequences of deadly recklessness, Section 322 of the Pakistan Penal Code was deleted and replaced with Section 320, reclassifying unintentional homicide as a bailable offence

A citizen, frustrated by years of judicial indulgence toward the powerful elite, posed these questions to the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) a few months ago. After considerable prodding and delay, a terse and guarded reply finally arrived. It addressed none of the substantive questions and confined itself instead to the predictable, politically safe assertion that “all citizens are equal before the law”.

Not far from our frontiers, in a neighbourhood of identical malpractices, the Indian Government modified its Motor Vehicle Act in 2019 by the addition of Section 199A, which calls for penalising the parents with fines and jail terms up to 3 years, if their underage children are found involved in offences such as driving without a licence, rash driving, causing an accident or traffic violations.

Regrettably, Pakistan chose just the opposite trajectory. The judge whose daughter killed 2 food company employees in Islamabad was elevated from the High Court to the Supreme Court. Effectively cushioning the powerful against the consequences of deadly recklessness, the law was conveniently amended, and Section 322 of the Pakistan Penal Code was deleted and replaced with Section 320, reclassifying unintentional homicide as a bailable offence.

The incidents described above are neither isolated aberrations nor limited to the judicial domain. From the killing of Samia Sarwar in 1999 to the deaths of Shahzeb Khan, Nazim Jokhio, Kainat Soomro, and the sexual abuse and killing of 9-year-old Fatima, there are countless and painfully consistent examples of this barbaric immunity enjoyed by the rich and the powerful. The Qisas–Diyat framework, intended as an instrument of mercy, has too often become a marketplace where justice is negotiated, and life is priced.

“Forgiveness” by impoverished families rarely reflects free will; it reflects fear, coercion, or financial desperation. A society that allows murder to be settled like a private debt inevitably erodes faith in the rule of law. Reforming the Qisas–Diyat provisions by closing the door on back-channel compromises is therefore not merely a legal necessity but a moral imperative for a state that claims equality before the law for all its citizens.

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