HYDERABAD: The Hyder-abad circuit of the Sindh High Court has set aside an order of Sindh governor on a complaint of sexual harassment filed by a female teacher and remanded the case back to him for hearing the parties and considering again all material available on record.

The division bench comprising Justices Zafar Ahmed Rajput and Amjad Ali Bohio had reserved the order after hearing the parties on Sept 18 and Oct 1 and announced it on Oct 6. It was passed on a petition filed by the female teacher, who had challenged an order of Sindh governor passed on March 7, 2024, on her complaint against principal of Public School Hyderabad and former chairman of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), Larkana, Nasim Ahmed.

The principal filed representation before the governor after Provincial Ombudsman Sindh (POS) passed an order on the teacher’s application and penalised the principal on Nov 24, 2023.

The governor remanded the case back to POS and the complainant filed the petition in SHC Hyderabad circuit bench through Advocate Sajjad Ahmed Chandio who argued that the governor did not appreciate admitted facts and evidence on record.

He said that impugned order of the governor passed on March 7, 2024, was not well reasoned as it failed to reappraise the evidence properly adduced by the parties.

He said the governor ought to have decided the representation on merit considering the oral as well as documentary evidence available on record instead of pushing the petitioner, the victim, in agony of de novo enquiry.

The principal’s counsel said that the petition was not maintainable in law as the order of the governor was within his powers vested in him under Section 9 of the Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, 2010. It was very clear that the governor had been entrusted with powers of passing any order on a representation before him “as he may deem fit”.

The bench set aside the governor’s March 7 order after hearing the parties and remanded the matter back to him for passing the order afresh after hearing the parties and considering all material available on record.

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2024