From FIR to Failure: How Criminal Prosecutions Lose Credibility Between Registration of Case and Judgment

Abstract

The First Information Report (FIR) is envisaged as the procedural gateway through which criminal justice is set into motion in Pakistan. Despite its centrality, criminal prosecutions initiated through FIRs frequently culminate in acquittals, hostile witnesses, compromised trials, or findings of benefit of doubt. This article undertakes a comprehensive socio-legal and doctrinal examination of the gradual erosion of prosecutorial credibility between FIR registration and final judgment. It interrogates how FIRs are routinely misused as instruments of coercion, extorting monetary benefits, and elite bargaining; how police structured prosecutions undermine evidentiary integrity; and how prosecutorial marginalization, investigative bias, and systematic corruption collectively distort the criminal process. Anchored in constitutional principles, statutory interpretation, and authoritative judicial precedents, particularly the Lahore High Court’s seminal observation in 2025 MLD 1879 (Sumera Rasheed v The State and others), the study argues that prosecutorial failure in Pakistan is not incidental but structurally engineered. The article proposes that without institutional realignment, accountability mechanisms, and prosecutorial empowerment, criminal law will continue to serve private power rather than public justice.