A STATE does not demonstrate its strength by the number of its critics it can imprison. Its strength is measured by its willingness to tolerate dissent, submit executive power to law and allow courts to protect even those whom the state considers troublesome. Pakistan today faces a troubling test on all three counts.

The cases of Baloch activist Dr Mahrang Baloch and lawyers Imaan Mazari Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha are different in their facts and legal foundations. Yet, taken together with the treatment of political opponents and other dissenting voices, they raise a larger question: is the criminal justice system increasingly being used not merely to prosecute alleged offences, but to manage dissent?

Mahrang Baloch emerged as a prominent voice against enforced disappearances and alleged ex­­t­rajudicial killings in Balochistan. In June, an antiterrorism court sentenced her and another activist to life imprisonment in a case arising from the death of a security official during the 2024 Ba­­loch Raji Machi. Amnesty International criticised the proceedings as an expedited secret trial, stating that no direct evidence linking her to the violence had been presented. Her case has consequently become emblematic of wider concerns about due process and the treatment of Baloch dissent.

The state is entitled — indeed obligated — to pro­­secute violence. Human rights advocacy or po­­litical activism cannot confer immunity from cri­minal law. But the converse is equally important: allegations of disloyalty or association with hostile organisations cannot substitute for evidence est­ablishing individual criminal responsibility. The graver the charge, the greater the need for transparent proceedings and scrupulous due process.

Exceptional powers created against today’s adversary may become tomorrow’s weapon against those who created them.

The experience of Imaan Mazari Hazir and her husband, Hadi Ali Chattha, raises another disturbing issue. Both lawyers and human rights activists, they were sentenced in January to 17 years’ imprisonment under multiple provisions of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act in relation to social media posts. On Sept 17, the Supreme Court suspended their sentences and ordered their release. Within hours, they were arrested in another case and sent back to jail.

Whatever the ultimate merits of that second case, the sequence raises a fundamental rule-of-law concern. If obtaining bail in one case merely opens the door to detention in another, judicial relief risks becoming theoretical. Liberty cannot meaningfully depend upon how many FIRs remain available after a court orders someone’s release. This phenomenon has implications far beyond individual defendants. Arrest becomes punishment before conviction; multiplicity of proceedings becomes a mechanism for prolonged detention; and appellate delay can make eventual acquittal an inadequate remedy. A person who spends years incarcerated before a conviction is overturned cannot be given those years back.

HRCP’s 2025 report described a severe contraction of civic space and raised concerns about erosion of judicial independence. It documented the increasing use of cybercrime, sedition and antiterrorism laws against journalists, political workers, activists and lawyers, alongside continuing repor­ts of enforced disappearances and restrictions on expression.

These developments occur against a persistent public perception that unelected institutions — par­ticularly the security establishment — exerci­­se influence over political and accountability processes. Both the establishment and government have rejected various allegations of political persecution. Such competing claims cannot be reso­l­ved by assertion. That is precisely why visibly in­­d­e­­pendent courts, transparent trials and faithful compliance with judicial orders are irreplaceable.

The controversy surrounding former prime mi­­nister Imran Khan’s medical treatment illustrates the institutional problem. On Aug 18, the Supreme Court ordered that he be shifted to Shifa Inter­national Hospital for examination and treatment, with his personal physician and sister. Instead, he was taken to the government-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences and returned to prison, prompting allegations of non-compliance.

The matter was fixed for Sept 16, but by then, the Federal Constitutional Court had requisitioned the record of the hospital transfer cases. The Supreme Court itself expressed reservations about the FCC’s intervention but, citing judicial comity, adjourned proceedings for three weeks while seeking the attorney general’s assistance on the jurisdictional question. What began as the straightforward issue of compliance with a prisoner’s medical treatment order thus became entangled in a dispute over the jurisdiction of Pakistan’s two apex courts — a development critics view as having shifted attention from the unanswered question: was the original order obeyed?

The issue need not be Imran Khan personally. Tomorrow it may be someone from an entirely different political camp. The constitutional question is whether an order of the highest court binds the executive in practice or merely begins another round of litigation. Montesquieu warned that “there is no liberty” where judicial power is not separated from the other powers of the state. The warning remains strikingly relevant. Courts cannot preserve liberty merely by issuing orders; those orders must command obedience. Pakistan does not need weaker security institutions. It needs stronger constitutional institutions.

Allegations of terrorism, violence and incitem­e­­nt should be prosecuted where evidence exists, but antiterrorism and cybercrime legislation must not become convenient substitutes for ordinary criminal process. Trials involving political activists should be transparent. Appeals involving inc­a­­rcerated defendants require genuinely expedited hearings. Bail and release orders must be im­­plemented in substance, not defeated through serial detention.

Most importantly, enforced disappearance can have no place in a constitutional state. Every person detained by the state must be produced before a court, informed of the accusation and afforded access to counsel.

The government, opposition and establishment should all understand the same principle: exceptional powers created against today’s adversary may become tomorrow’s weapon against those who created them. Pakistan’s crisis, therefore, is larger than Mahrang Baloch, Imaan Mazari Hazir, Hadi Ali Chattha or Imran Khan. It concerns the boundary between the citizen and the state. A criminal justice system earns legitimacy not when it efficiently imprisons the unpopular, but when it protects due process precisely when doing so is politically inconvenient. The ultimate test of the rule of law is simple: whether law restrains power — or power determines what the law will mean. n

The writer is a retired inspector general of police and former DG FIA.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2026