A tribute to the late Asghar Khan?
The Supreme
Court (SC) has resurrected the famous Asghar Khan case yet again. In its
hearing on May 7, 2018, a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice of
Pakistan (CJP) Saqib Nisar rejected the review petitions filed by former COAS
General (retd) Mirza Aslam Baig and former ISI chief Lt-General (retd) Asad
Durrani against the SC’s short order of October 19, 2012 in the instant case. The
court was keen to know what if anything had been done vis-à-vis the
implementation of the SC’s detailed judgement of November 8, 2012, in which the
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was ordered to initiate proceedings against
the politicians who had allegedly received Rs 140 million (arranged by Mehran
Bank’s Younas Habib) with the objective of blocking the PPP’s victory in the
1990 elections. The judgement held that the President, COAS, ISI Director General
(DG) or their subordinates were not allowed to create an Election Cell in the
Presidency for the purpose, and had ordered action against them based on
evidence gathered during investigation. Any political cells existing within the
Presidency, ISI, MI or any other intelligence agency were declared abolished. Now
the SC wishes to fix responsibility for the failure to implement its verdict of
six years ago. It should be recalled that late Air Marshal Asghar Khan had
filed a writ in the SC in 1996 that argued all these shenanigans had rendered
the 1990 elections neither fair, free nor transparent. Then President Ghulam
Ishaq Khan, COAS General (retd) Mirza Aslam Baig, ISI chief Lt-General (retd)
Asad Durrani and banker Younas Habib were the particular focus of the SC’s
orders. Nothing came of this verdict as the two top army officers filed the
review petitions that have only now, six years later, been rejected, while many
of the other actors in this whole drama have passed away. The prominent politicians
and others who allegedly received money to oppose the PPP in the 1990 elections
from the platform of the newly created Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) include:
Nawaz Sharif Rs 3.5 million (to add to his mounting woes in one corruption
reference after the other), Lt-General Rafaqat Rs 5.6 million (for distribution
amongst journalists), Abida Hussain Rs one million, Jamaat-i-Islami Rs five
million, journalist Altaf Hussain Qureshi Rs 0.5 million, Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi
and Jam Sadiq Rs five million each, Mohammad Khan Junejo Rs 0.25 million, Pir
Pagara Rs two million and Humayun Marri Rs 1.5 million. None of the alleged
recipients admit to it, according to the FIA DG Bashir Memon deposing before
the SC.
The fact that
the Asghar Khan case first took 16 years for the SC to pronounce its verdict
and then another six years for the review petitions against that verdict to be
taken up and finally rejected is another illustration of what afflicts our
judicial system. In the ordinary course of things, cases remain pending for one
reason or another interminably, hence the backlog of two million cases in the
system. Extraordinary cases such as the Asghar Khan one are normally expected
to receive more attention and focus, given their implications for national
affairs. It is amazing therefore that the case has only meandered seemingly to
the finish line in a period of 22 years. And even after the review petitions
that the FIA hid behind as obstacles to investigation and prosecution have been
swept away by the SC, there are a lot of questions in the public mind whether
even now retired Generals and others who have held high office can be proceeded
against. The SC fresh orders are very clear: proceed, but a reported caveat is
that the decision to take action against the errant Generals is left to the
government. In other words, the traditional reluctance to tangle with the
military, which zealously guards the respect of its officers, is still in play.
The real test of the SC’s otherwise worthy orders now will be: who will bell
the cat?
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