More than 300,000 cases pending in KP courts

PESHAWAR: The number of cases pending in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa courts that require prompt resolution has surpassed 300,000.

According to a recent news report, as of November 2023, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) and its subordinate courts were dealing with an astounding 321,692 pending cases. According to the breakdown, the PHC itself has 41,692 open cases, but the district courts are overburdened with a whopping 280,039 open cases.

In contrast, there were 27,989 cases pending at the Peshawar High Court as of January 2018. On the other hand, 166,048 of the 168,923 cases that were filed between January 2018 and November 2023 were resolved.

Read More: PHC declares the verdict while PTI loses the “bat” symbol

The state of affairs in the district courts is equally concerning. In January 2018, there were 204,456 cases in the backlog; by November 2023, that number had skyrocketed to 280,039 cases. In the same time frame, 2,981,957 cases were filed in district courts, and 2,910,709 cases were resolved.

The 11-month period from January 2023 to November 2023 saw a notable increase in the filing rate of cases in both the PHC and the district courts, according to the report. Remarkably, during this time the PHC documented 27,379 new cases, of which 29,026 were resolved. On the other hand, during the same period, 4,93,284 cases were filed in the district courts.