Torture Law and the Criminal Justice System in Pakistan

Kamran Adil

I- Introduction
Theoretically, the law making should be responsive to the local and internal factors. Contrary to this, most often than not, the legislation in Pakistan aims at addressing the external issues. In not recent past, Pakistan amended its criminal laws related to terrorism and money laundering to exit grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). In similar spirit, on 22nd November, 2022, the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment) Act, 2022 was enacted in response to the conditions attached to inclusion of Pakistan on the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP Plus) list for the European Union (EU). This, however, does not mean that indigenous needs are not addressed by the legislature. There are instances when the law making has been done in response to purely local reasons. For example, the Zainab Altert, Response and Recovery Act, 2019 was introduced to strengthen the system of information exchange, protection and prevention of offences against children. The purpose of this adumbration is to examine the latest torture law with special reference to its genesis, characteristics and the way it affects the criminal justice system.