ISLAMABAD, June 25: The Senate functional committee on human rights on Friday decided to form a sub-committee to probe loss of life and other issues of Okara military farms tenants with the directions to submit a 'confidential report'.

The decision was taken by the committee after questioning military officials including a three-star general, two major generals, brigadier and colonels while a serving major of ISPR sat in the second row in civilian clothes to watch the proceedings. Defence Minister Rao Sikander Iqbal also attended the meeting.

Led by the committee chairman S.M. Zafar, senators Raza Rabbani, Farhatullah Babar, Hameedullah Jan Afridi, Latif Khosa, Dr Mohammad Said and Dr Khalid Ranjha listened to the presentations by military officials and then asked probing questions.

At one stage, the committee chairman asked Maj-Gen Mohammad Tahir to expunge certain derogatory remarks against the politicians from his presentation. The chairman also advised the military officials to consider media and the NGOs as facilitators of social change instead of taking an adversarial view of them.

Taking exception to certain remarks considered as contemptuous against the media and the civil society in the presentation by military officials, Senator Latif Khosa said media and NGOs played a positive role in highlighting the issue and an unfair comment was recorded against them.

Earlier in his presentation, Maj-Gen Tahir said the Okara military farms issue could have been amicably resolved had the media and NGOs not blown it up as a 'Human Rights Issue'.

After advise by the senators, Lt-Gen Khalid responded on behalf of his junior two-star general, "ISPR would be interacting with the media and we have learnt from our mistakes".

Regarding killing of Suleiman Masih, Maj-Gen Tahir said he was a drug addict and it was an impression that he could be dispensed with.

He said the law enforcement agencies had not confronted the tenants but it were they who had attacked the government officials. He said not a single trace of an army bullet was recovered.

As the senators started questioning the military officials, Senator Farhatullah Babar said if the officials had taken any action on the auditor general's report which identified nine cases of mismanagement albeit corruption amounting to Rs236 million in Okara military farms.

Replying to Senator Babar's query, Lt-Gen Khalid said an internal inquiry team had been formed to probe the matter and fix responsibility.

The top military officials sought time to give answers to questions raised by Senator Babar and other committee members about many contentious issues as to when the farms were handed over to the military, the period of lease, the amount paid by the military to the Punjab government in lieu of lease.

Recalling the Tando Bahawal case of 1992, Senator Babar asked for a detailed probe into the Okara killings and said even in 1992 innocent people were killed on cooked up charges while worn out cliches like miscreants were being used to describe the tenants now. He said Suleiman Masih was a student of matriculation and the family found torture marks on his body when it was handed over to them.

Senator Raza Rabbani pointed out the contradiction in the views of the military officials about the 'no go areas' and the use of terms like 'fugitives'.

Senator Hameedullah Jan Afridi questioned the rationale of giving compensation to the family of those killed if they were fugitives and asked if the military intended to adopt a similar policy in Wana.

Senator Dr Said said one expected a lot from the army when it acted as the landlord. "They should be different from a feudal landlord in Sindh or Punjab." He said the gap between the army and the people had increased over the last 20 years and steps should be taken to bridge this gap.

The committee members wanted to know the number of tenants killed in the armed operation by the Rangers officials, the details of their postmortem reports and the results of investigations and inquiries.

The committee chairman, S.M. Zafar, later constituted a sub- committee to be headed by Senator Khalid Ranjha and senators Nighat Mirza, Hameedullah Jan, Farhatullah Babar and Dr Mohammad Said as its members. It was decided that the sub-committee shall submit a 'confidential' report to the senate committee on human rights.