Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar and citizen Ahsan Jameel Gujjar, each key respondents within the Supreme Court docket’s (SC) suo motu case pertaining to the switch of former Pakpattan district police officer (DPO) Rizwan Gondal, on Saturday objected to a report compiled by the chief of the Nationwide Counter-terrorism Authority (Nacta) on the incident.
Nacta Chief Maher Khaliq Dad Lak had been ordered by the chief justice to conduct an inquiry to find out the “full fact” about who was liable for Gondal’s sudden switch.
Amongst different findings, Lak’s report talked about that Gujjar, in a gathering with the DPO and different law enforcement officials on the Punjab chief minister’s workplace, had stated “All will endure” if such an incident occurred once more.
Lak concluded that whereas the phrases have been “actually derogatory, insulting and represent misconduct”, however stopped wanting deeming them an try at coercion, saying that “whether or not they represent legal intimidation is solely a authorized debate”.
Gujjar, in his response submitted to the SC at the moment, declared that the report was “imprecise” and opposite to details.
He described himself as an odd citizen who didn’t maintain any authorities or public workplace who “thus, shouldn’t be prone to trigger any state of susceptibility or intimidation on a part of the state functionaries, who even in any other case should not so gullible by way of their official/administrative features”.
The assertion gave the impression to be a response to a Supreme Court docket warning that Gujjar could also be tried for thwarting the functioning of the state.
“At greatest, the respondent might solely be seen to have acted in a state of hysteria in a naive method […] for which he had already expressed his regret and repentance,” the reply stated.
Gujjar had beforehand supplied an unconditional apology to the SC for his “unwarranted participation” in official issues.
The court docket had repeatedly grilled Gujjar up to now as to what capability he tried to mediate a dispute between state functionaries and a personal citizen, noting that he couldn’t plausibly current himself as a ‘guardian’ of the Maneka youngsters as he didn’t have any authorized declare to take action.
CM Punjab says his model not accounted for
Hours later, Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, in a proper written assertion, dismissed Lak’s report as “a figment of the creativeness of a fertile thoughts”.
The Nacta chief had concluded in his report that the orders for Gondal’s switch in the course of the evening “flowed” from the chief minister’s workplace.
The Punjab CM rejected these findings, claiming that the report is “completely conjectural, based mostly on a figment of creativeness of a fertile thoughts, rooted in possibilities and surmises, and due to this fact unfit of any reliance in any respect”.
Lak’s evaluation had been based mostly on a collection of telephone calls made on the night of Gondal’s switch between the Punjab police chief, the DIG HQ, the CM’s workplace, the DPO of Pakpattan and the RPO of Sahiwal.
The DIG HQ, in accordance with Lak’s report, had confirmed that he had obtained a “telephonic order” at 10pm on Aug 26 to switch Gondal, which he had not been in a position to adjust to immediately. The DIG HQ had then obtained one other name from the then IG Punjab, Syed Kaleem Imam, round 12am to convey the switch orders to the DPO.
“This urgency from the IGP additionally goes consistent with the assertion of ex-DPO Pakpattan, whereby orders have been conveyed by the PSO to CM to the IGP to take away him [Gondal] by 9am [the following day],” Lak had concluded.
The Punjab CM’s rebuttal at the moment dismissed “the unwarranted hype” attributed to these calls and described the conclusion drawn as a “damp squib when thought of in its correct context and contours”.
The inquiry officer’s conclusion drawn from the calls made out of the CM workplace to the IGP have been “superfluous and exaggerated”, the response states.
“The rationale for [the CM’s office] contacting the IGP was to sensitize” the police chief relating to the CM’s deliberate journeys to Khanewal and Pakpattan, the rebuttal provides, not, as Lak steered, to convey the CM’s want to have Gondal eliminated.
The assertion regretted that “this facet [that the CM’s office could have had a separate matter to discuss with the Punjab police chief] has been given a brief shrift and has been gratuitously discarded with out a demur.”
The response remembers that the chief minister, throughout his look earlier than the SC, had said clearly that he had solely interfered within the matter on the preliminary stage in order to make sure and amicable settlement.
It asks that the Supreme Court docket to chalk up the incident to the brand new CM’s inexperience at approaching the best channels for dispute decision and guarantees that such an incident won’t ever happen once more and a correct criticism decision mechanism could be labored out which might route such issues via the provincial police chief.
The Pakpattan incident
In August, Khawar Maneka was flagged to cease at a safety picket in Pakpattan by police, however he allegedly refused and raced forward. The police had subsequently chased him down and compelled him to cease, after which harsh phrases have been exchanged between the 2 events.
When Gondal’s switch orders began making rounds a couple of days later, it was broadly speculated in information and social media that that the police officer was transferred due to the incident.
It was believed that the officer was transferred for refusing to apologise in particular person to Khawar Maneka over the altercation between him and the police.
Nevertheless, it later transpired that there had been two incidents involving a run-in between the Maneka household and native and freeway police, which had led to acrimony between Khawar Maneka and Pakpattan police.
That acrimony lastly got here to a head when the Punjab police chief, the chief minister and the Maneka household received pulled right into a messy dispute over how the matter ought to have been resolved, which ended with the abrupt switch of Gondal from his police duties.
The circumstances of Gondal’s switch are the item of debate within the ongoing case.