Punishment for offences commited outside Pakistan

There is no express enactment by which the pakistan's legislature can assume to render foreigners subject to the criminal law with reference to acts committed by them beyond the limits of pakistan. In the words of chief justice Cockburn, 

" proposition of law can be more incontestable or more universally admitted than that, according to the general law of nations, a foreigner, though criminally responsible to the law of the nation not his own for acts done by him while within the limits of its territory, cannot be made responsible to its law for acts done beyond such limits . The rule must however, be taken subject to this qualification, namely6, that if the legislature of a particular country should think fit by express enactment to render foreigners subject to its law with reference to offences committed beyond the limits of its territory, it would be incumbent, on the courts of such country to give effect to such enectment, leaving it to the state to settle the question of international law withthe governmentsof other nations."

The acts of a foreigner committed by him in the territory beyond the limits of pakistan do not, therefore constitute an offence against the penal code, and consequently, a foreigner cannot be held criminally responsible under that code by the tribunals of this country for acts committed byhim beyond its territorial limits.

 It is only for acts done when the person doing them is within the territory over which the authority of pakistan law extends, that the subjects of a foreign state owe obedience to that law and can be made amenable to its jurisdiction. Thus when it is sought to punish a person, who is not a pakistani subject, as an offender in respect of certain act, the question is not, where was the act committed, but, was the person at the time when the offence was committed, within the territory of Pakistan.