Parents of martyred APS students seek judicial probe into attack

Threaten to return compensation, residential plots

PESHAWAR: The parents of the martyred students of Army Public School have criticised the federal government for its failure to order judicial probe into the December 16, 2014 terrorist attack and warned to return the cash compensation and residential plots of land if their demands were not met.

Addressing a press conference on Saturday, a seven-member committee of the parents led by lawyer Fazal Khan said that the personnel of law-enforcement agencies were pressuring the parents to stop raising further demands.

Fazal Khan said he had also lost his son in the attack and had refused to accept the government’s offer of a residential plot and cash in protest as the authorities had failed to investigate the case in the real sense despite the passage of two years.

He said the parents had done nothing wrong and were simply demanding probe into the attack but despite assurance the government was reluctant to carry out investigation and arrest the accused.

“We are not satisfied with the report that the culprits involved in APS attack were hanged,” Fazal Khan said. He added that officials concerned should take the parents into confidence by sharing information with them.

He said it was the APS attack that forced the government to come up with the National Action Plan to tackle extremism and terrorism, bring the 21st constitutional amendment and set up military courts, but it failed to satisfy the victims’ parents.

On the occasion, a member of the committee, Ahmed Ali, said that on Friday he was on way to his workplace when some people took him into an office where officials informed him that parents of the victims had been compensated and “now they have no right to protest, raise further demands and ask for a probe.”

Ahmed Ali said that parents did not want to sell blood of their children and would return whatever government had given to them including cash and the civil award Tamgha-e-Shujaat. “All we want is a proper probe into the APS incident,” he stressed.

He said that parents were ready to face the consequences and would raise voice for awarding punishment to the people involved in the attack. “We had not sent our children to school in the hope of receiving monetary benefit. We had sent them to receive education,” he remarked.