PESHAWAR:
The Peshawar High Court (PHC) issued show-cause notices to the Frontier Constabulary (FC) commandant and the interior secretary after they failed to explain why they had flouted a service tribunal’s order to reinstate 290 sacked paramilitary troops.
Fazle Khaliq had submitted an application before the court for an early hearing of his petition.
His counsel, Abdul Latif Afridi, informed the court that the respondents had failed to submit their reply to the court on time.
“Are these the same troops who refused to take part in an operation against militants and were consequently sacked?” asked PHC Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan.
“There may be a few of those troops,” answered Afridi.
The troops, belonging to Platoon 182 of the FC, were sacked after they had allegedly refused to take part in an operation against militants in Frontier Region Peshawar in 2010.
Consequently, the late Sifwat Ghayur, FC’s Commandant at the time, dismissed over 900 troops. Some were later reinstated after Sifwat died in a suicide attack in 2010.
The troops continue to deny the charges against them, asserting in the petition that “they had been dismissed from service without any fault.”
Proceedings were later suspended after Peshawar High Court Bar Association (PHBA) president Khwaja Muhammad Khan Garha requested the court to suspend hearing of the cases as members of the PHBA boycotted court proceedings upon K-P bar council’s strike call.
The hearing was adjourned till May 22.
‘Flouting direct orders’
According to the petition, the troops had been sent on holiday after returning from another security operation on March 3, 2010.
However, they came to know that they had been dismissed from service on their “refusal to obey orders” through newspapers on March 7th.
The sacked troops had been reinstated twice by the service tribunal but the FC authorities were reluctant to accept them, the petition maintained.
Operation ‘spring cleaning’ had been launched against militants in Peshawar and Kohat on February 24, 2010 and lasted till March 3, 2010.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 10th, 2012.
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I wish this report was a little more comprehensive with regards to specifics. But if they are the same troops who refused to show for duty when the battle against the militancy got really tough, then they should have been court marshaled. Dismissal from service is not enough of a punishment for deserters.