Some cases do not end with a bang. They end with silence — and on 05 October 2026, a division bench of the Sindh High Court (Justice Agha Faisal as author, with Justice Shah Nawaz Memon) let silence do the talking. The income tax reference filed by LIOYD against the Commissioner of Income Tax — case number 177 of 2005 — was dismissed for non-prosecution.
What does that mean in plain words? The applicant simply stopped pursuing the case. For years, no effort was made to have the matter listed for hearing, and when the court finally called it, nobody appeared for the applicant at all. A court cannot keep a file alive on life support forever. The bench dismissed the reference, following the Supreme Court's authoritative guidance in Commissioner Inland Revenue v. Rafeh Limited (PLD 2020 SC 518), which settles how courts should deal with stale, unprosecuted references.
Crucially, nothing was decided on the merits. Whatever tax questions LIOYD had raised back in 2005 remain unanswered by the court — the dismissal decides only that the applicant lost interest, not who was right on the tax. For the department, the practical effect is that the underlying assessment or demand stands exactly as it was before the reference was filed.
The lesson for taxpayers and their counsel is blunt: filing a reference is only the first step. A reference must be prosecuted — applications for listing, appearances at hearings, follow-up with counsel. A file that sleeps for years will be buried, not revived. If you have an old reference gathering dust in the High Court, this judgment is your warning bell: move it, or lose it. Aur qanooni larai me sab se bara dushman susti hoti hai — the file does not fight itself.