RAHIM YAR KHAN: Some top officials of the Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology (KFUEIT) had to approach the Lahore High Court’s Bahawalpur bench to get their arrest orders suspended which were issued by a local additional sessions judge on allegations of torture and illegal confinement by a student.

Aliza Ali of BS (Physics) fourth semester said in a video statement that her elder sister Azqa Rehman was a Ph.D scholar at the KFUEIT who got a scholarship from the Punjab Higher Education Commission for six-month research.

She claimed the head of Physics Department Professor Dr Bilal Tahir and Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Muhammad Suleman Tahir asked her sister to surrender the scholarship else her registration would be cancelled. When she refused to surrender the scholarship, the officials mentally tortured and threatened Azka.

Aliza further said that on May 18 last when she was in her department, university security head Khurram Shehzad with arms arrived there with two policewomen and forced her to accompany them to the security department.

Varsity says complainant is actually defending her sister’s scholarship fraud

When she refused, Shehzad tried to beat her but the policewomen rescued her. Shehzad took her to the security office and locked her in a room after taking her bag and cell phone.

Police recovered her after four hours confinement when her parents approached the court.

The counsel for Aliza, Chaudhary Muhammad Adeel, told this correspondent that after recovering Aliza from the varsity, sub-inspectors Nooruddin Zangi, Salma Shehzadi and constable Bushra told the court in their report that Aliza was locked in a room where she was in a state of shock.

The court issued notices to VC Suleman Tahir, Prof Bilal Tahir and security in-charge Khuram Shehzad. Adeel said Aliza initially, on May 30, filed an application with the Sadar police and then with the SP investigation for registration of case against officials but to no avail.

Later, Aliza filed a writ petition under section 22-AB in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Riaz Ahmed on June 9. After listening to both parties, the court ordered an FIR against varsity officials but it was not lodged by police.

KFUEIT spokesperson Zainul Abideen told Dawn the Punjab Higher Education Commission had approved an International Research Support Initiative Fellowship (IRSIP) for a KFUEIT Ph.D physics student Azqa Rehman.

According to that IRSIP, she had to go to the University of New Castle, Australia, for her research for six months in November 2022. But Azqa without approval of the PHEC and KFUEIT, joined a Malaysian university for research on her own.

“It means Azqa wants to get PHEC scholarship fraudulently since she could not enroll her in two universities at the same time.”

Abideen said it was an academic fraud because Azqa had submitted an undertaking with her application of scholarship that if any academic misconduct appears during or after completing the research, PHEC could cancel the scholarship and recover the amount.

He said for IRSIF scholarship, a student had to sign a bond with the PHEC that after completing the six-month research, the student would complete her degree after returning to her home university and utilise her funds in six months.

“If a student does not follow it, his/her scholarship is cancelled without any notice.”

Abideen said in PHEC IRSIF grant, funds were directly provided to the student and no money or cheque was transferred to any university. But now the family of Azqa was demanding Rs 1.3 million scholarship amount from KFUEIT.

He said Dr Bilal Tahir and batch adviser Dr Jalil Rehman tried to contact Azqa several times through emails and phone but she did not respond.

He said Aliza, her third sister and brother-in-law visited the varsity and threatened teachers Jalil and Zohaib and later they filed a writ in the court. Abideen also shared CCTV footage of their visit.

Sources said the varsity officials had approached the LHC which suspended the lower court order a couple of days ago.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2023