Court seeks verified reporton Turkish family’s deportation

LAHORE :The Lahore High Court Monday asked a federal government’s counsel to verify reports about deportation of former vice-president of Pak-Turk Schools and his family. 

Justice Shams Mahmood Mirza was hearing a petition against alleged abduction of Mr Mesut Kacmaz, his wife and two daughters.

As the hearing started, the petitioner’s counsel Advocate Usama Malik stated that counsel Asma Jahangir was not available due to her other engagements. 

Citing media reports, he pointed out that the abducted family had been deported to Turkey by the Pakistani authorities. However, on court’s query, a deputy attorney general showed complete ignorance about the deportation of the Turkish family.

Justice Mirza deferred the hearing for a day and directed the law officer to come up after seeking instruction from the government on the latest development. A friend of the abducted family, Mr Orhan Uygun had filed the petition saying Mr Kacmaz was abducted from Wapda Town residence along with his wife and two daughters.

The court had restrained the government from deporting Mr Kacmaz and his family until decision of the case. The petitioner’s counsel submitted that the government through attorney general had undertaken before the court last year that the Turkish employees of the Pak-Turk School would not be deported until November 24, 2017.

However, he said Mr Kacmaz and his family had been abducted by unidentified persons from their house and there was likelihood that they would soon be deported in violation of the court order. He said the police were also reluctant to register a case of the abduction.

He asked the court to restrain the government from possible deportation of Turkish educationists and also place their names on Exit Control List (ECL). Verdict reserved: The Lahore High Court Monday reserved the decision on a petition requesting to make Punjabi language compulsory in schools for students of class 1st to 5th.

The petition was moved on behalf of the Punjabi Adabi Board. Petitioner counsel said according to the Constitution, Urdu was to be made the official language in 1988 but it was not done and even the recent judgment of the Supreme Court for making Urdu an official language and teaching regional language was not implemented.

He said Punjabi was our mother tongue and it would be easy for students of this area to understand in Punjabi but Punjabi was forcibly kept away from the schools and even from fields of science and technology.  He requested to order a compulsory part of the curriculum of the Punjabi language to the school students from grade 1 to grade 5.