A recent tragic incident in Multan—where a contractor’s reckless actions resulted in the daylight death of an only son and primary breadwinner—perfectly illustrates the structural blindspot in Pakistan’s legal and political system. Following the incident, the contractor was killed in a highly peculiar manner in Bahawalpur during a police operation. While official accounts claim he attempted to flee police custody during a four-day remand and opened fire at a checkpoint, many view the specialized police force as a state-sanctioned killing squad rather than a normal law enforcement body. Because videos of the tragedy had gone viral across mainstream and social media, public anger was severe. Consequently, the masses celebrated this “street justice” as a job well done, operating under the assumption that a few million rupees in state charity would eventually make its way to the grieving family.
This collective reaction from the media, civil society, and the legal fraternity (wakeels) exposes a dangerous, singular obsession with punitive retribution. While the state is duty-bound to prosecute criminal infractions under the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), focusing exclusively on capital punishment or extrajudicial execution ignores the devastating civil wrong inflicted upon surviving dependents. A deceased contractor satisfies the state’s or nation’s demand for penal justice, but it leaves an economically shattered family entirely stranded and helpless . How I wished that this case could have been a watershed movement had the contractor was allowed to live and would have faced a criminal and civil case as a result of criminal act and civil wrong he did !concerning people need to understand this point.
By treating fatal negligence purely as a criminal offense, Pakistan’s legal machinery systematically deprives victims of their right to financial restitution. A parallel tort liability claim under the Fatal Accidents Act 1855, or general common law principles, is the only mechanism capable of rectifying the economic destruction caused by the loss of a breadwinner. Forcing a defendant to pay comprehensive, long-term civil damages is not an alternative to criminal prosecution; it is an independent legal necessity that reinstates a family’s financial security and preserves their structural dignity, saving them from a forced reliance on arbitrary state handouts. Furthermore, the absence of robust tort enforcement undermines systemic deterrence. In a legal landscape where civil assets are rarely targeted, negligent actors frequently gamble on navigating the backlogs, institutional corruption, or blood-money compromises (Diyat) of the criminal justice system.Yet, a powerful historical exception proves that our legal system can deliver when it chooses to: the development of the Fatal Accidents Act 1855. Championed over the decades by pioneering advocates like the late Mr Maqsood Ali Khan and Nasir Maqsood, this single statute has successfully rescued thousands of families facing economic trauma after losing a breadwinner. In landmark rulings such as Messrs Siemens Pakistan (2012) and Pakistan Railways v. Abdul Haqique, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has reinforced that general damages can be awarded using a pragmatic “rule of thumb” where basic human and legal rights are violated.The tragedy is that this proactive judicial approach has remained strictly confined to fatalities, completely abandoning victims who survive with permanent disabilities, medical trauma, or financial ruin.
Politically, successive regimes have further stifled accountability by packing public utility and administrative statutes with sweeping “good faith” protection clauses. If a municipal authority leaves a trench open or a live wire exposed, public officials fall back on these statutory immunities, effectively locking the courtroom door against ordinary citizens. Furthermore, the state has actively ignored its own constitutional mandate under Article 212(1)(b) of the Constitution of Pakistan, which empowers Parliament to establish specialized administrative courts to handle tortious liabilities committed by the state against citizens. For decades, a lack of political will has left this constitutional pathway blank, forcing aggrieved individuals to navigate a notoriously sluggish civil court system against a state that uses endless public resources to delay proceedings.
To bridge this gap, our legal ecosystem must look across the border. Facing the exact same colonial common law hurdles, the Supreme Court of India bypassed statutory voids by inventing “Constitutional Torts”—routinely awarding direct financial compensation out of state funds for gross negligence under their fundamental rights jurisdiction. Pakistan’s provincial High Courts must finally replicate this regional advancement under Article 199 of our Constitution. Until our bench, bar, and political leadership abandon nominal payouts and sovereign shields, the aggrieved Pakistani citizen will remain structurally stranded, waiting for a system that treats civil injuries as accidents of fate rather than actionable failures of law.
If the superior courts were to begin aggressively entertaining civil damages claims alongside criminal trials—ordering the immediate freezing and attachment of a defendant’s commercial assets and personal wealth—the financial risk of operational negligence would become prohibitively high. Only by treating these tragedies as actionable civil wrongs can the state shift the mindset of individual, corporate, and state actors, ensuring that the true cost of negligence is borne entirely by the wrongdoer rather than their innocent victims.
The stagnation of tort law in Pakistan is not merely a consequence of legislative oversight; it is actively reinforced by traditional judicial habits and a political culture that favors executive insulation over citizen accountability. Historically, our superior judiciary has frequently fallen into what can be termed the “criminalization trap.” When an individual is injured or killed due to structural collapses, medical malpractice, or corporate negligence, the state’s default reflex is to register a First Information Report (FIR) under the PPC. While this pursues criminal retribution, it leaves the financially devastated victim completely empowered in rhetoric but entirely impoverished in reality. By failing to cultivate a culture of civil liability, the judiciary allows corporations and negligent individuals to shield their wealth behind corporate veils and protracted criminal appeals. True systemic reform requires a judicial paradigm shift: recognizing that justice is never fully served until the financial base of the wrongdoer is dismantled to permanently secure the future of those they destroyed.