A draft piece of legislation is in circulation to amend the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), where up to five-year imprisonment will be awarded to whoever scandalises or ridicules the Pakistan army and judiciary through any medium.
The law is yet to get a final shape for submission to the cabinet.
The draft bill has been authored by the ministry of interior and the ministry of law and justice is busy with its fine-tuning before submitting it to the prime minister for putting it up before the cabinet.
Sources pointed out that titled Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2023, the bill suggests a new section 500A after section 500 in PPC 1860.
The new section is titled ‘Intentional ridiculing or scandalising of the state institutions, etc’.
The legislation provides that whoever makes, publishes, or circulates any statement or disseminates information, through any medium, with an intention to ridicule or scandalise the judiciary, the armed forces, or any of their member, will be guilty of an offence punishable with simple imprisonment for a term, which may extend to five years, or with a fine which may extend to PKR 1 million or with both.
In schedule II of the PPC, a new section titled 500A has been added to section 500, which says that the offender will be arrested without a warrant and the offence will be non-bailable and non-compoundable, which can only be challenged in a sessions court.
“So this is what Reimagining Pakistan is all about. The final blow to democracy in Pak. An Orwellian State in the making. We politicians should remember such measures come back to haunt all of us eventually!” PTI leader and former federal minister of human rights Shireen Mazari tweeted.
The document suggests that given the long-tested legal principle noted in section 196 of the CrPC, prior approval of the federal government before taking cognisance of the case or registration of a first information report (FIR) against any person has been made mandatory to avoid misuse of the mooted PPC section.
The Imran Khan government had attempted to pass a similar bill in 2021 that proposed up to two years of imprisonment and a fine up to Rs 5 lakh, or both, for those who “intentionally ridicule the armed forces”. However, the Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2020 was not passed amid criticism across the country.
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