PESHAWAR: A man, whose young son was killed during the Taliban attack on the Army Public School Peshawar in Dec 2014, on Thursday moved the Peshawar High Court to seek orders for the federal and provincial governments to make all the information on the campus carnage public.

In the petition, lawyer Ajun Khan, father of student Asfand Khan, said consequent to the information of the apparent terrorist attack on the APS, it was the fundamental right of the students and their parents to know about it and the non-communication of that information amounted to the violation of fundamental rights of the parents, including him.

He said on Aug 28, 2014, the National Counter Terrorism Authority had through a letter informed the provincial government and additional chief secretary Fata that the commander of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan in collaboration with others had made a plan to carry out terrorist activities against APS and other educational institutions run by the Pakistan Army to kill the maximum number of children of the army officers and soldiers in order to avenge the killing of their accomplices.

The petitioner said necessary action to counter the threat was not taken by the administration.

He said whether that was an act of criminal negligence or some secret mission or conspiracy that such a sensitive information or intelligence report was ignored which had resulted into the unforgettable incident of terrorist attack on APS on Dec 16, 2014, which had left 144 students and some staffers martyred.

The petitioner said he and his wife had lost their sleep and peace of mind since that incident and such happening kept them pushing to look into the facts as to why their institutions failed to perform their duties to protect the life of its citizens.

The respondents in the petition are the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government through chief secretary; provincial home secretary; additional chief secretary of Fata; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa IGP; Nacta, and the Federation of Pakistan through interior secretary.

The petitioner said since the terrorist attack on APS, he and families of other attack victims had been asking the respondents to inform them why the information of the attack was not communicated to them and what action after the attack had been taken by them to determine and fix the responsibility on the concerned officials which had caused so much damage and harm to the soul of the entire nation.

He claimed he had himself raised those questions before the president of Pakistan, chairman of the Senate Defence Committee Mushahid Hussain Syed and the KP chief minister besides others, but got no answer showing as if everybody wanted these questions to go away.

The petitioner prayed the court to accept his petition and direct the respondents to answer questions raised by him and release all information and actions on APS attack till date.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2016