Adliya Mein 44 Saal
By Agha Rafiq Ahmad Khan
Farid Publishers
ISBN 978-969-7827-65-7
294pp.  

When we speak of corruption, we associate it generally with politicians, business tycoons and bureaucrats. However, Justice (retd) Agha Rafiq Ahmad Khan’s book Adliya Mein 44 Saal breaks new ground by providing a detailed, personal account of the criminal — yes, criminal — atmosphere he was witness to during his long judicial career.

Author Agha’s portrayal of this phenomenon seems true because he was himself a victim of it. An honest man, he ruffled some feathers, was denied a salary for six months, lost his job and was ordered to be arrested. That he managed to come out of this bureaucratic bedlam and rise to the position of the chief justice of the Federal Shariat Court makes this book worth reading.

Proud of his family, the author confines himself till page 67 to his childhood and schooling in a manner that seems to tire out the reader, but the book then turns to personalities who mattered — Field Marshal Ayub Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB), Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi and others — with the author dwelling a great deal on Ayub’s anger at Bhutto in words that obviously the author doesn’t let us know.

This was, of course, much later, for there was a time when Bhutto was Ayub’s right hand man, held the important post of foreign minister and was secretary general of Ayub’s party, the ‘Convention’ Muslim League.

The book jumps in time when the author describes........

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