Court martial: Ex-ASF official challenges conviction

Islamabad High Court will take up case today

ISLAMABAD: An ex-official of the Airport Security Force (ASF) has challenged before a high court his sentence by a military court.

The appellant, Allah Ditta, a resident of Okara, has contended that the army act was not applicable to him and he had been sentenced under a “wrong law”.

Ditta, an assistant sub-inspector of the force, was court-martialed, demoted and imprisoned in 199 after he “slapped” and used “filthy language” against his Company Commander, Muhammad Tariq Khan, at the Karachi airport when his request for leave was allegedly turned down ahead of Eid.

Ditta through his counsel, Muhammad Bashir Khan, has made the aviation division secretary, the chief security officer and the force commander of the Quaid-i-Azam International Airport respondents in the case.

Islamabad High Court (IHC) judge Mohsin Akhtar Kayani will take up the case on Monday (today).

In 1999, a military court sentenced Ditta, demoted him to the rank of a guard and dismissed him from service besides awarding him one-year rigorous imprisonment in a civil jail.

In January 2000, an appellate forum of the ASF rejected his appeal while terming it being devoid of merit.

“The petitioner has been awarded three penalties on a trivial charge,” said his counsel. He said that punishment aims at correction and may not be such that deprive a civil servant of the right of earning livelihood.

Khan said that his client was jobless since the date of his dismissal.

The counsel stated that Ditta was inducted in the ASF in 1982 while chapter IV of the army act was added to the ASF ACT in 1984 through an ordinance called ASF (Amendment) Ordinance 1984.

According to the General Clauses Act, Khan said, an act comes into force on the day of promulgation and no act, amendment, notification and policy can be applied from retrospective effect.

The counsel said that his client has been vigilantly pursuing the remedy since dismissal.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2016.