Articles > English > Lies & Distortions By The Media About Hudood Ordinance
October 21st, 2006 by Abdul Rehman
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5. Women in Jail
Another false accusation being made against the Hudood Ordinance is that it is due to this Ordinance that many women are dwelling in jails. The NCSW established a Special Committee to review the Hudood Ordinances in 2002, which wrote in its report, on page 3 that 80% of the women, languishing in jail, are due to the Hudood Ordinance. Geo TV also re-iterates the same; in fact, several leading newspapers do the same.[8]
Are women resting in jail for several years due to Hudood Ordinance? Can this be fixed by repealing Hudood Ordinance? The answer is a big NO!
The Hudood Ordinance neither deals with the lodging of FIRs, nor does it deal with how the cases are to be heard. Therefore, connecting these issues with the Hudood Ordinance or to label it as a ‘torment’ of the Hudood Ordinance is nothing but ignorance!
The Hudood Ordinance merely deals with the following issues:
(a) Definition of sexual crimes
(b) Prescribing punishment for these sexual crimes
(c) Proof required for these crimes
It does NOT deal with the following issues:
(a) Lodging of FIRs
(b) Keeping women in jail or five star hotels or anywhere else
(c) Slow judicial process
(d) Hearing of pending cases, or hearing being too slow, etc.
It may be pertinent to note here that this issue of women lying in jail is a ‘blessing’ of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Act V of 1898) which was not made by a ‘revengeful’ Zia-ul-Haq or ‘idiot’ ulema. This was made by the British in 1898 themselves and today, channels like BBC, CNN, etc. and of course, various Muslim channels are blaming the Hudood Ordinance for this.
Someone may stand up to ask that before 1979, women were not languishing in jails, so, the Hudood Ordinance must be connected with this issue. The answer to this argument is that the only thing which the Hudood Ordinance did was to declare zina a crime, because, in the original PPC, zina bil raza was NOT considered a crime!!! Neither was zina bil raza considered a crime, nor was there any punishment for drinking wine and/or intoxicating liquor.
These women are languishing in jails for so many years because of the outdated slow judiciary process, due to which the cases are never heard. At the beginning of 2005, there were 123,640 pending hudood cases; out of which, more than 78,833 cases were that of the Prohibition Order alone! It is due to the Code of Criminal Procedure (henceforth, CrPC) and some other defects in our judicial system, which has caused the hearing of cases to become overly slow. Thus these women are lying in jails because they were arrested, but, the cases have not been heard; they consist of both—innocent and guilty.
I would also like to ask my friends that there are several prisoners, men as well as women, lying in jails for years, because, their cases have not been heard uptil now. In fact, in a few cases, even after freeing the prisoners, they still remain in prison. If a person is being held in jail, because, the police arrested him/her for a cognizable offence, punishable under any section of the PPC: will these people repeal the PPC for solving that problem?
In fact, suggesting a repeal of the Hudood Ordinance as a remedy for the problem of women lying in jail, which is actually due to the corrupt police, can rightly be explained with the following example. A person got infection in a certain organ of his body; instead of curing the infection, he thought that cutting off the whole organ will solve the ‘infection problem’ for good! Only a fool & ignorant will be happy with such a solution, because, doing so will cause him to lose a vital part of his body & even cause his death—alongwith the elimination of the infection.
Surprisingly enough, this is what the NGOs and the media has been asking for i.e. to solve the problem of slow judiciary process, stop lodging cases unless in rare cases—in Zina, don’t lodge an FIR unless four male Muslim truthful witnesses are available. This is akin to saying that in 90% of the cases, the adulterers and fornicators should be given an ‘open sex’ environment.
Their recommendation is further that if any of the four witnesses do not qualify ‘tazkiyah al-shuhood’ or if the judge is not satisfied with the testimonies, he may acquit the accused & subject all witnesses and the complainant to a punishment of 80 strokes of lashes! A deep analysis of this recommendation reveals that this is aimed at discouraging people from even reporting the remaining 10% cases, by terrorizing them of being subject to qazf. For example, if four people saw the heinous act, they will still abstain from testifying of having seen it, because, if even a single witness did not qualify the requirements of ‘tazkiyah al-shuhood,’ all of them will be punished with 80 stripes!
I would also like to shed light on a very oft-repeated argument that 80% of the women languishing in jails, are due to Zina Ordinance. We already discussed that the Hudood Ordinance is not responsible for this, but, let me warn you further. Don’t get confused by this figure!
Firstly, it does NOT reveal anything about the number of women in jail; it only shows the cause of being in jail. Furthermore, it is still wrong to say that 80% of the women inhabiting jail are waiting trial for zina ordinance. In the NWFP jails, during July 2003, the number of women languishing in jail for trial for narcotics cases was 72, whereas, the number of those for trial under all four hudood ordinances was 56.[9] From even the hudood cases, a major portion is that of the prohibition cases and furthermore, the total number of women in jail was 172. This means that less than 20% (not 80%) of the women languishing in jail were waiting trial under zina ordinance. [Source of these statistics is a report prepared by the Women Aid Trust; see footnotes.]
Similarly, during 1988, the number of women prisoners in various jails of Punjab, was 657; out of these, 306 were languishing for zina cases.[10] This, again, gives a figure of 46%, which is nearly half of the figure claimed by feminist NGOs!
Note:-
Gen. Musharraf promulgated the Law Reforms Ordinance, 2006 this year, which added a new section 156-B to the CrPC. According to this section, zina (not zina-bil-jabr) cases will not be investigated by a police officer who is lower in rank than a SP (superintendent.) Furthermore, no person shall be arrested for zina by the police until an arrest warrant has been issued by the magistrate of a court of competent jurisdiction.