IG escapes Supreme Court wrath

Fayyaz Leghari submits unconditional apology.

KARACHI: A day after the judges slammed the Sindh IGP Fayyaz Leghari for presenting a misleading report in court, the police chief suspended 881 more policemen who are facing criminal trials.

At the suo motu hearing of the Karachi violence case, the Supreme Court larger bench - comprising justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Khilji Arif Hussain, Sarmad Jalal Osmany, Gulzar Ahmed and Muhammad Athar Saeed - accepted Leghari’s unconditional apology, directing him to restrain the undertrial policemen from highhandedness and also to provide protection to the witnesses of these cases.

On Tuesday, the bench had issued show-cause notice to the IGP for “concealing facts” about the policemen who were enjoying field postings despite facing criminal trials.

Submitting his reply to the notice through his private lawyer, Muhammad Shah Khawar, Leghari informed the bench that 881 more policemen had been suspended across the province. These are in addition to the 400 policemen who were suspended earlier in February.



Since the IGP cannot order suspension of senior officers, the cases of five senior police superintendents facing criminal trials have been sent to the relevant authorities to take action, he added.

Justice Jamali, who was heading the bench, questioned why the IGP had failed to provide the complete list in the first place. “We are only asking for strict compliance of the laws,” he said. The lawyer replied that the IGP was not concealing the names deliberately, but was collecting further information.

Accepting the apology, the bench withdrew the show-cause notice issued to Leghari and directed the advocate general, Abdul Fattah Malik, to submit a complete report on all other police personnel or officials involved in crimes and facing trials in the court by the next session.



Jamshoro SSP Farrukh Bashir, whose name was missing from Tuesday’s list but was suspended the same night, appeared before the bench complaining that he was wrongly suspended. He claimed that the murder charges against him have yet to be framed by the court. The judges found out, however, that the trial court had already framed charges against him. They just advised him to defend himself “better”.

The bench asked the IGP to make sure that the charges against the suspended policemen have been framed by the courts.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2013.