In the legal world, there is one presumption: innocent until proven guilty. But the Punjab Habitual Offenders and Anti-Social Behavior Bill, 2026 does the opposite, guilty until proven innocent. The Bill is pitched as a modern tool to tackle organized crime and habitual offenders, replacing a
decades-old colonial-era law. But beneath that promise lies a mechanism that punishes suspicion, not conviction, allowing the state to declare a person a “habitual offender” on “credible evidence” or repeated arrest, without a single court ever finding them guilty.
This Bill empowers intelligence
committees to control anti-social behavior under the ambit of vague, unelaborated terms. This article analyzes the Bill against the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.
Sec 4(6) provides of the bill provides that the Intelligence Committee’s minutes shall remain
confidential. This may not appear much but under Article 19-A, every citizen has the right to access information on matters of public importance, subject to reasonable restriction. The Constitution itself explains what a reasonable restriction looks like under Article 10(6): even in preventive detention, the most serious power a state can exercise over a citizen, documents may only be
withheld from the person and from judicial review if a government secretary signs a certificate affirming that disclosure would harm public interest. Section 4(6) offers no such safeguard, only blanket secrecy.
The next term in Section 4(6) is “bona fide” and the presumption that the committee acted in good faith unless proven otherwise. Article 10-A guarantees every citizen a fair trial before their civil rights is affected, including the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and given adequate facilities to prepare a defense. Section 4(6) reverses this, the citizen must prove the
committee acted in bad faith. In practice, this is not a meaningful hearing but a presumption of correctness which the aggrieved person must disprove without the material needed to do so.
Clause 2(g) similarly authorizes the committee to monitor the public over “various sensitive issues and events,” again without defined criteria. Left undefined, both provisions can result in two citizens engaged in identical conduct being treated differently, because different committees interpret the same conduct differently. This violates Article 25, which guarantees equal protection
before the law, a protection that must exist not merely as wording in a statute book, but in equal treatment in its application.
Under Clause 2(j), the committee is directed to supervise paying guests and tenants in residential areas within its jurisdiction. This is presented as an extension of the Punjab Information of Temporary Residents Act, 2015, designed to regulate hotels, hostels, and commercial accommodation. Contrary to this, the Bill applies the same framework to ordinary tenants and paying guests in private homes. Treating the ordinary act of renting a home as a basis for monitoring intrudes upon the privacy of homes, violating Article 14, which guarantees the dignity of man and the privacy of home.
Section 2(f) allows the committee to prevent a person or group from engaging in anti-social
behavior. The word “prevent” is not unambiguously defined anywhere in the Constitution or the Bill, and can be interpreted in many ways. Section 2(f) empowers the committee to act before an act occurs. The problem is not merely the word “prevent,” but that the mechanism of prevention is
left undefined and where action is taken before an act occurs to stop people, preventive detention is typically used, which violates Article 10. Article 10 protects citizens against illegal detention.
Even where preventive detention is constitutionally permitted as an exception to the right to trial, that exception is narrowly construed and conditioned on specific safeguards. The Bill claims the exception while ignoring the obligation that comes with it.
Section 7 of the bill provides the measures to be taken for controlling of anti-social. These include recommendation to competent authority to place the individual’s name in the Provisional National Identification List (PNIL), impound his passport and block his CNIC. These measures may result in limiting of the individual’s movement, curtailing his fundamental right of freedom of movement
under Article 15 of the Constitution. Furthermore, the intelligence committee can also recommend removing of an individual’s account form cyberspace and even confiscating his devices because
of ‘misuse’, although ‘misuse’ itself has not been described in the bill, seriously putting right to free speech guaranteed under Article 19 under question.
One of the most debatable parts of the bill when it comes to security of fundamental rights is the concept of “habitual offenders” which has been laid down in section 9 of the proposed bill.
According to this section, a person against whom a report under Section 173 of CrPC has bee submitted, a person who has been arrested in FIR for some offenses more than once or a person who is found involved in Anti-Social activities can be declared as “Habitual offender” by a concerned Magistrate.
The declaration of habitual offender on the basis of registration of FIR or submission of report under Section 173 of The Code of Criminal Procedure 1898 is a violation of Article 10-A of the Constitution which guarantees the right to fair trial and due process. The superior courts of the
country have laid down the dictum numerous times that mere registration of FIR or submission of report under Section 173 of The Code of Criminal Procedure 1898 is neither a proof of guilt of an individual nor a credible piece of evidence enough for conviction.
In fact, even abscondence of an
accused cannot be a proof of his guilt. Guilt requires due process and fair trial, proving of charges beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt. Declaration of an individual as Habitual offender, transfers a sense of criminal charge upon him without cogent evidence and proper trial, which clearly violates Article 10-A.
Upon orders by the magistrate, a monitoring device shall be attached to the individual for a
minimum of three months. Putting an individual’s movement under constant surveillance may violate his liberty under the Article 9 of the Constitution. The installation of such device on an individuals may harm a person’s dignity guaranteed under Article 14 (1) of the Constitution, whichis an absolute right.
The courts have observed strict attitude when it comes to protection of an individual’s dignity. In 1994, Supreme Court declared public hanging of convicted criminals as
unconstitutional violating the right to dignity of the individuals guaranteed under Article 14 (1).
Furthermore, Islamabad High Court in 2019 declared ‘parading’ of suspects or criminals in
handcuffs in public as violation of Article 14 as it harms dignity of the individuals rendering the act unconstitutional. Under the light of these decisions, the installation of a tracking device, would also violate an individual’s dignity under Article 14 (1), especially when the person is not even proved guilty of an offense by a court of law.
In a nutshell, all the major provisions are seen to be repugnant with the fundamental rights
guaranteed in our constitution. However, Article 8 of the Constitution declares the laws in derogation of fundamental rights to be void. Therefore, the bill has been redirected on notice by the speaker Punjab Assembly Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan. The reasons for the redirection were similar to what is noted in this study, the violation of fundamental rights. Now the nation waits for the further steps. Is the bill going to be presented again in a new form? Is the government going to take notice of the fundamental rights that are being endangered? Is the government going
to take notice of the unlimited powers being granted to the executive? These are the questions that has put every prudent mind in a state of turmoil while we wait for the re-drafted bill to be presented again.
Co-Authors: Kashaf Jaffry, Mian Talha Imad.
