Student, family petition SHC for protection

Family wants court to restrain police and allow student to take her exams

KARACHI: The Hyderabad circuit bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday restrained the police from registering an FIR against petitioners Farzana Jamali, Aijaz Jamali and Zohaib Jamali, and put the respondents on notice for October 10.

Farzana, a final year student of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University who had accused a faculty member of harassment, her father Aijaz and her brother Zohaib petitioned the SHC.



Advocate Ali Palh filed the petition, praying the court to order the authorities for protection of their lives, restrain the police from registering any new FIR against the family and allow the student to take her midterm exams. The petitioners cited threats to their lives while seeking the court's protection.

Their counsel informed the court that so fa,r two separate FIRs have been registered against Aijaz and Zohaib since Farzana reported the harassment initially to her family and later to the public through a press conference.

Farzana claimed that her department's acting chairperson, Aamir Saeed Khattak, subjected her to harassment. She further said that when she took the complaint to the university's Vice Chancellor, Arshad Saleem Arain, he also behaved in a similar manner.

According to the family, when Aijaz took up the matter with the university, he was falsely implicated in an FIR and arrested on the charges of assaulting a university's teacher on campus.

Moreover, Zohaib who was injured in a cracker explosion in Benazirabad on September 28, was charged by the police, along with two other suspects, in an FIR for planting the explosives.

Farzana told the court that her mid-term exams are approaching but the prevailing situation has prevented her from concentrating on her studies and going to university. However she wants to attempt the exams but at an official place outside the university, she said.



She has already filed a case with the provincial ombudsman charging the teachers with harassment. The matter is sub judice and the harassment case has not been directly taken up in the SHC's petition which is limited to the protection of their lives, restraining the police from registering new FIR and allowing the student to take her exams, the lawyer told media.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2018.