Practice Area

Constitutional & Writ Practice

We bring writ petitions under Article 199 of the Constitution against arrests, freezing orders, tax demands, exit-control placements, and regulatory directions issued without lawful authority. For a client under investigation, the writ is often the first line of defense, and we treat it as part of the defense rather than a detour from it.

A writ petition is decided on its paperwork. There is rarely oral evidence; the affidavits and annexures are the trial. So we draft the petition as the complete case — every fact traced to a document, every ground tied to a provision — and we assume the first hearing may be the one that matters. A petition filed in haste to beat an arrest can still be filed with discipline, and it must be, because the respondent's law officer will read it looking for the one loose fact that sinks it.

We also plan for the objections before they are raised. The first response to almost every writ is that an alternate remedy exists — an appeal, a revision, a departmental representation. Sometimes the objection is good. We tell clients when it is, and we exhaust or plead around the alternate remedy rather than hoping the objection is overlooked. Where the petition supports a parallel criminal defense, the two are run on one theory of the case, so that nothing conceded in the writ is quoted back in the trial.

The forum map for constitutional cases has moved. The Twenty-sixth Amendment of 2024 routed constitutional jurisdiction to designated benches, and further amendment in 2025 has continued to reorder the apex-level structure; the practical effect on any given petition should be confirmed at filing. The positions on this page are stated as of mid-2026 and are checked at the outset of every mandate.

How We Serve

The High Courts' jurisdiction under Article 199 is the working remedy against unlawful state action. We petition for certiorari, mandamus, and prohibition against federal and provincial authorities — NAB call-up notices, FIA enquiries, FBR recovery measures, SECP directions — where the action is without jurisdiction, in excess of it, or in bad faith. We plead the facts the way a judge will test them: with the document that proves each one annexed.

Where a person is detained, we move under Article 199(1)(b)(i) and section 491 of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898 for production and release. That includes challenges to unlawful remand, to detention that has outrun its order, and to preventive detention under the Maintenance of Public Order laws. These petitions are heard urgently, and we prepare them to be filed within hours, not days.

We challenge statutes, ordinances, statutory rules, and SROs as ultra vires the parent law or repugnant to the Constitution. Much of the enforcement clients face rests on delegated legislation, and a notification made without power falls with everything built on it. We also defend the vires of instruments where we act for the party relying on them.

Article 10A's guarantee of fair trial and due process reaches the investigation stage, and Articles 4, 14, 18, and 24 do real work against arbitrary seizure, account freezing, and restraint of business. We frame these grounds in the first petition, because a right pleaded late is a right the record no longer supports.

Most writ petitions are won or lost at the interim stage. We move for stay at first hearing with the undertakings and security a court will want to see, and we plan around the limits the Constitution itself imposes — including the six-month lapse of interim orders against the assessment or collection of public revenue under Article 199(4A).

We take single-judge orders to Division Benches by intra-court appeal under section 3 of the Law Reforms Ordinance 1972 where that route is open, and we file and defend petitions for leave to appeal before the Supreme Court under Article 185(3). The constitutional amendments of 2024 and 2025 have redrawn where constitutional cases are heard at the apex, and we confirm the correct forum before filing, not after.

Representative Matters

20—Challenged an asset-freezing order before the High Court in writ jurisdiction; order set aside.Constitutional
20—Acted in a shareholder-oppression petition under the Companies Act 2017; resolved by court-supervised buyout.Corporate Disputes

All Representative Matters

Illustrative of the practice; matters anonymized consistent with confidentiality obligations.

Who To Call

Photograph forthcoming