PESHAWAR: The provincial government has decided to impose major penalty on three public prosecutors and terminate their services in a case of sexual harassment at a hotel in Bangkok.
An official told The News that it was only a matter of time to issue termination letters to the accused as under the rules they had to be given 15 days for reply to the show-cause notice served on them.
According to the summary of the Home and Tribal Affairs Department seeking the termination of Sohail Ahmed, assistant public prosecutor Malakand, Muhammad Kamran, assistant public prosecutor Dir and Farman Ullah, assistant public prosecutor Dera Ismail Khan, the three were nominated for the Trial Advocacy Training Skills, from January 16-21 at Bangkok, Thailand. The officers left for Thailand to take part in the training and were lodged in a hotel.
The Resident Legal Advisor, US Embassy Islamabad, through an e-mail sent a report regarding the involvement of these officers in a case of sexual harassment during their stay in Conrad Hotel Bangkok.
The officers were removed from the hotel and finally sent back to Pakistan on January 18. The reports of the act of harassment and consequent deportation of the prosecutors were played up by electronic and print media, which prompted the provincial government to initiate probe against the officers.
The Home and Tribal Affairs Department wrote to the chief secretary that the officers had earned bad name not only for the institution (Prosecution Directorate), but also for the government and people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as the country. In its summary, the Department put the chief secretary in the picture and advised that there was not even any need for formal inquiry in the matter as all the officers were in the period of probation as they were appointed only two months ago on November 3, 2016.
The Department suggested that the officers should be awarded a major penalty of removal from service as their conduct had put the whole foreign funding for the Prosecution Directorate at risk.It also requested the chief secretary to put their services under suspension till the finalisation of the process of removal from service.
The official, while referring to the summary of the Home and Tribal Affairs Department, the copy of which is available with The News, said that the chief secretary is the competent authority to initiate process of “removal from service” of the officers.The official said the competent authority had decided in principle to approve the removal of the erring officers and this would be notified shortly.