Reverberations of history

The findings of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and Judicial Commission report on the June 17 incident of killings of at least 10 Pakistan Awami Tehreek supporters in Model Town Lahore have not been made public so far. Once they are, they could have serious implications for Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, especially the Sharif brothers.

The First Information Report was lodged weeks after the incident. Days after the FIR, the police, on the insistence of Pakistan Awami Tehreek, had to include terrorism charges against the sitting prime minister, chief minister Punjab, kitchen cabinet of the PM, and senior police officers among many others.

Following this FIR, pending investigations and further action amid demands from the PAT to arrest the accused, another FIR has been lodged in a police station in Islamabad against the prime minister and his key cabinet members for torture and killing of PAT workers at the sit-in before the parliament.

"This is an FIR based on a well-designed application which indicates serious implications," says a senior PML-N leader, asking not to be named. "The content of the FIR and the nominated persons clearly show the purpose this document is going to serve."

Interestingly, the FIR includes names of the entire federal cabinet.

On the other hand, despite the registration of FIR, investigation into the incident is going through legal and bureaucratic hurdles. "After the commission’s reports and addition of terrorism and other charges in the FIR, the government will soon constitute a new JIT," Punjab Law Minister Rana Mashood Ahmed Khan tells TNS. He says the judicial commission too had not fixed responsibility on any particular person.

The one-member Lahore High Court-level judicial commission, formed to investigate the June 17 Model Town incident, reportedly holds the government responsible for the incident; it implies the police acted on government orders which led to bloodshed. Some excerpts of the commission’s report find conflicting affidavit-statements of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and former law minister Rana Sanaullah and other senior bureaucrats involved in planning the crackdown. There are contradictions regarding the orders to the police to ‘disengage’ or calling them back from the scene.

The report says what happened on the ground did not match such claims.

An excerpt of the report reads: "Shahbaz Sharif claimed in his affidavit that he had ordered police to disengage in Model Town. However, the chief minister did not mention this in the press conference he addressed after the fiasco. It seems the word ‘disengagement’ was an afterthought to save the chief minister."

Also read: Beyond the raid in Model Town

The report does not ignore the police’s responsibility. Termed inconclusive by the government, it has neither directly fixed responsibility nor given any clear findings, determining the hands behind the shootout.

Regarding the police, the report did say that the police mishandled the situation. Here, too, no responsibility was fixed on any particular police official. The commission report reflects on the police officials’ statements that it all started with firing from the PAT workers’ side. The JIT report, available unofficially, determines that the police over-reacted in the incident. However, it does not rule out the evidences of instigation from the PAT workers, though no clear proof of such a thing was available with the team.

A senior serving police officer, asking not to be named said, "It was not possible for the police to go for such a massive crackdown without approval of the high command or political will. Such actions are not taken on one’s own," he says. However, sometimes there are chances that police could overdo, following a backlash from PAT workers and decide to give them a lesson, he says.

"My client believes the police action was done at the behest of the government for which he has nominated the government authorities," says Mansoor Afridi, counsel of Tahirul Qadri.

Meanwhile, Qadri and Imran Khan are continuing their sit-in against the government in the capital; apart from demanding the PM’s resignation and setting up of a neutral government to be followed by large scale electoral reforms and new elections, they are demanding fair investigation of the Model Town incident through a joint team comprising army intelligence officials and neutral police officers among others. The government, on the other hand, is trying its best to avoid the legal proceedings, in view of the implications it could have in the present circumstances.

"The ruling PML-N is trapped through these cases which will keep hanging like Damocles’ sword over them," a senior police officer in the Punjab police says. "In the presence of an active media and relatively free judiciary, it will be difficult to hold back these investigations for a long time. The rulers know the seriousness of these cases."

In 1974, a murder case was registered against the then powerful and popular prime minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. On July 4, 1979, he was hanged in the same case following a controversial verdict of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Such are the reverberations of our history.