ISLAMABAD: The federal government on Thursday sought three weeks’ time from the Supreme Court for submitting a report on the Army Public School (APS) attack case.

As per earlier court directive, the government was supposed to furnish the report, signed by Prime Minister Imran Khan, by Dec 10.

A three-page report submitted by Additional Attorney General Sajid Ilyas Bhatti before the Supreme Court said the prime minister had constituted a four-member cabinet committee to meet aggrieved parents of slain children of the APS to hear their grievance, as earlier suggested by the Supreme Court.

The committee comprises federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari, Economic Affairs Minister Omar Ayub Khan, Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Dr Fehmida Mirza and Minister for States and Frontier Regions Sahibzada Mohammad Mehboob Sultan.

Cabinet panel formed to meet parents of martyred schoolchildren, SC told

Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Khalid Jawed Khan or his nominee and the additional secretaries of defence and interior ministries would attend the committee meetings as special invitees.

At the last hearing of the case on Nov 10, a three-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed had ordered that the parents of the martyred children should be heard by the government within four weeks and a report signed by the prime minister be placed before the apex court for consideration.

The application moved under Order 33, Rule 6 of the Supreme Court Rules 1980 for extension of time also sought permission to incorporate outcome of the cabinet committee’s meeting with the parents of the APS children in the report to be filed before the court.

In its last order, the Supreme Court had noted that the prime minister had made a statement before it that the government was conscious of its responsibilities and taking all possible steps and actions to ensure that the bereaved parents got proper justice and those people who were responsible for the attack or those who had failed to perform their responsibilities were taken to the task and dealt with in accordance with law.

Moreover, the AGP had told the apex court that the government would ensure dealing with all the culprits and those who did not perform their duties which had led to so much bloodshed, the order had stated.

It had observed that the parents of the APS students were unable to accept the deaths of their children and squarely blamed certain individuals for dereliction of duties.

The earlier order of Oct 20 had recalled that the mothers of the deceased children complained that no FIR had been registered against the persons, who were responsible to ensure security of the APS, Peshawar. They said that persons sitting in high offices had not been taken to task nor they had been declared responsible for neglecting their duty resulting into the death of 147 innocent schoolchildren.

The mothers said the then army chief retd Gen Raheel Sharif, the then interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the then chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pervez Khattak, the then corps commander of Peshawar Hidayatur Rehman, the then director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence retd Lt Gen Zaheer-ul-Islam and the then interior secretary Akhtar Ali Shah were the people who were at the helm of the affairs and ought to have known about the happening of the incident but they neglected in performance of their duty to the extent that the massacre of the school children happened.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2021