Inexpensive, speedy justice remains a dream for litigants in property cases.

Byline: Naeem Sahoutara

KARACHI -- 'For six to seven months, it made my heart bleed when I pursue justice,' Kirsti Robert says, trying to summarise her six-month experience of litigating over a piece of land she owns.

The 55-year-old started the legal battle earlier this year against her ex-husband over a house she claims she owns.

'If you are filing a case in court, you have to put everything aside and keep visiting the court,' she said, sharing the views of hundreds of thousands of citizens engaged in civil litigation across the country.

A mother of four, she told Dawn how she was compelled to institute a property suit against her former husband over the house they once purchased together decades ago.

Ms Robert's claims to have contributed up to 95 per cent of the total cost of the 200-sq-yd house that her ex-husband wants to sell just to get his five per cent share.

Prolonged property litigation

Till July, there were nearly 40,000 property suits pending disposal in the district courts of Sindh.

According to official statistics, over 21,000 of such cases have been pending before the subordinate courts in Karachi's East, West, Central, South and Malir districts alone.

However, hundreds more cases pending disposal in the superior courts could add more to the numbers.

Over 21,000 property-related civil cases have been pending in district courts of Karachi

While access to inexpensive and expeditious justice is a basic right of every citizen as guaranteed in Article 37(d) of the Constitution, there is a common impression that litigating over property disputes is the last choice of any citizen given the prolonged and complicated legal procedures and delayed judicial proceedings.

Abdul Mujeeb Pirzada - a senior Supreme Court lawyer specialising in constitutional, criminal and civil matters - opined that the trio of the state machinery, the judiciary and the lawyers were not to be blamed for unnecessarily prolonged litigation in civil matters.

'The low number of judges and overburdening of the courts and tactics played by the lawyers result in lengthy proceedings in the matters of civil nature,' Mr Pirzada told Dawn.

'Secondly, the laws have not been updated that add to the delays in the proceedings,' he said, referring to certain key laws such as the Criminal Procedure Code of 1908, the Evidence Act of 1872, the Criminal Procedure Code of 1898, etc.

Judicial sources blamed the backlog of civil litigation on the incompetency and lethargic...

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