IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PAKISTAN 
(Appellate Jurisdiction) 
 
 
PRESENT: 
Mr. Justice Mian Saqib Nisar 
Mr. Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa  
 
 
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 
(Against the order dated 04.02.2014 passed by the Lahore High 
Court, Lahore in Criminal Miscellaneous No. 158-B of 2014) 
 
 
Muhammad Shakeel 
                                                  …Petitioner 
versus 
The State, etc. 
… Respondents 
 
 
For the petitioner:  
 
Rana Shakeel Ahmad Khan, ASC 
 
For the State: 
Ch. Zubair Ahmad Farooq, Additional 
Prosecutor-General, Punjab 
 
 
For respondent No. 2: 
Mr. Adnan Shuja Butt, ASC 
 
Date of hearing: 
 
 
20.03.2014 
 
ORDER 
 
Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, J.: Cricket and judicial decision 
making may not have much in common except that there is an 
umpire in the game of cricket deciding ‘appeals’ and judging 
various issues arising during the progress of the game and there 
may be some judges sitting in their courtrooms who may 
sometimes be tempted to hit the ball over the boundary rope. 
Likeness of a judge to an umpire in a game of cricket has already 
been alluded to by none other than Lord Denning in his judgment 
delivered in the case of Jones v. National Coal Board [(1957) 2 Q.B. 
55]. His lordship had observed that “Even in England, however, a 
Judge is not a mere umpire to answer the question “How’s that?”. 
His object, above all, is to find out the truth, and to do justice 
according to law; -------”. Another common factor between the two 
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 
2
is that both cricket and judicial decision making are played/ 
practised by gentlemen, and now by noble ladies as well. All of us 
know that cricket has moulded itself over time and has adapted to 
the requirements of the changing times but judges, being 
conservative by nature and tradition, have so far been slow in such 
transformation or adaptation. Keeping pace with the requirements 
of the modern times as well as constraints of time concomitant 
thereto a five-day test match in cricket is giving way to a one-day 
match and even to a blitz called T20 and although Garry Sobers, 
Hanif Muhammad and Sunil Gavaskar are still idolized for their 
marathon efforts and long hauls in batting yet the present day 
heroes are the likes of Shahid Afridi who, notwithstanding the 
shots they play or the techniques they employ, are applauded for 
their obsessive, if not neurotic, hitting and for scoring as many 
runs as possible within the shortest possible time. As against that 
the judges are generally still sticking to their old and archaic styles 
of writing their orders and judgments which is causing a 
disconnect between the judiciary and the litigant public because 
the decision making is slow, long and out of pace with the influx of 
cases asking for decision, if not out of sync with the expectations of 
majority of the stakeholders. We have found the present case to be 
a classic example of such a disconnect as despite about one 
hundred and eighty thousand cases pending and clamouring for 
decision before the Lahore High Court, Lahore the learned Judge-
in-Chamber of the said Court had indulged in the luxury of writing 
as many as twelve pages for dismissing the petitioner’s application 
for bail which matter was merely an interim matter pertaining only 
to regulating custody of the petitioner during his trial. We feel that 
the matter could have been decided by the learned Judge-in-
Chamber through a much shorter order saving the Court’s 
precious time for attending to other similar matters of urgency. 
 
2. 
In the background of this Court’s accumulated experience 
over a long period of time and the wisdom gathered through the 
same we feel that time has come for breaking away from the 
attitudes and approaches of the past and for out of the box 
solutions to situations which apparently have no traditional 
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 
3
remedies. In short, we feel that time has come for a game changer 
and the present petition may be utilized as the watershed. It has 
appeared to us to be safer to start the proposed judicial 
repositioning with decisions of applications for bail and then to 
build on the same on the basis of the experience gathered. With 
this object and motivation in mind we propose that in future, 
unless the necessities of the case warrant otherwise, the following 
shorter format for deciding an application for bail may be adopted 
by all the courts below: 
 
(i) 
Without 
reproducing 
the 
particulars 
and 
contents of the FIR in detail an order should state 
directly and briefly the allegation levelled by the 
prosecution against the accused-petitioner. The details 
and particulars of the FIR would already be available 
in the application for bail itself or the same can be 
gathered from a copy of the FIR attached with such 
application. 
 
(ii) 
The details of the arguments addressed by the 
learned counsel for the parties may not be recorded in 
the order. It is to be presumed that the court 
concerned must have heard and attended to all the 
arguments addressed and the submissions made 
before it and if one is to look for such arguments the 
same may be found mentioned in the application for 
bail. It may be well to remember that an order granting 
or refusing bail is merely an interim order and the 
same is not to be equated with a judgment.  
 
(iii) 
The order should state the reasons for granting 
or refusing bail to the accused-petitioner as briefly and 
clearly as possible in the following format:  
 
(a) 
------- 
(b) 
------- 
(c) 
------- 
(d) 
------- 
 
It may not be lost sight of that brevity is the soul of 
wit. 
 
(iv) 
The order should record the terms of bail, if 
applicable. 
 
Adopting the said format we now proceed to decide the present 
petition. 
 
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 
4
3. 
Through this petition Muhammad Shakeel petitioner has 
sought leave to appeal against the order dated 04.02.2014 passed 
by a learned Judge-in-Chamber of the Lahore High Court, Lahore 
in Criminal Miscellaneous No. 158-B of 2014 whereby post-arrest 
bail was refused to him in case FIR No. 274 registered at Police 
Station Hanjarwal, District Lahore on 20.04.2012 in respect of 
offences under sections 148, 302 and 149, PPC. 
 
4. 
After hearing the learned counsel for the parties and going 
through the record we have observed as follows: 
 
(a) 
The allegation leveled against the petitioner in 
the FIR was that at the stated date, time and place he 
and his co-accused had resorted to firing at the 
deceased but the petitioner had not been attributed 
any specific injury and the allegation leveled against 
him in the FIR was couched in generalized and 
collective terms.  
 
(b) 
Admittedly nothing had been recovered from the 
petitioner’s custody during the investigation so as to 
confirm the allegation of firing leveled against him. 
 
(c) 
The investigating officer had concluded that the 
allegation leveled by the complainant party against the 
petitioner did not stand established during the 
investigation and as a consequence of such conclusion 
the petitioner had been opined to be innocent.  
 
(d) 
According to the FIR the complainant and the 
other eyewitnesses mentioned therein were available at 
the relevant time just outside the complainant's house 
but a bare look at the site-plan of the place of 
occurrence shows that the complainant and the 
eyewitnesses could not have seen the incident in issue 
while standing outside the house of the complainant, 
particularly when it had never been claimed by them 
in the FIR and in the statements made before the 
police under section 161, Cr.P.C. that they had 
followed the deceased and the accused party to the 
place of occurrence.   
 
(e) 
The investigation of this case has already been 
finalized and a Challan has been submitted and, thus, 
physical custody of the petitioner is not required at 
this stage for the purposes of investigation.  
 
Criminal Petition No. 203-L of 2014 
5
5. 
For what has been observed above we have found the case 
against the petitioner to be a case calling for further inquiry into 
his guilt within the purview of subsection (2) of section 497, 
Cr.P.C. This petition is, therefore, converted into an appeal and the 
same is allowed and consequently the petitioner is admitted to bail 
subject to furnishing bail bond in the sum of Rs. 1,00,000/- 
(Rupees one hundred thousand only) with two sureties each in the 
like amount to the satisfaction of the learned trial court. 
 
 
 
Judge 
 
 
Judge 
Lahore 
20.03.2014 
Approved for reporting.  
Yasin 
 
