LAHORE, Jan 13: Transfer of a police officer seems to have become an issue of ego between the federal and Punjab governments as the latter has recently thwarted the third bid by the former in this regard during the last seven months or so.

The officer in question, Dr Muhammad Rizwan, presently serving as Sargodha District Police Officer, was transferred by Establishment Division (ED) of the federal government to the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), Islamabad, along with three other officers.

However, Punjab government refused to relieve him against a notification of the ED issued on Jan 3, 2013. It termed the transfer against the inter-provincial rotation policy.

Police sources confided to Dawn that the provincial government had directed the DPO to continue his duty till further orders as it had written to the federal government that it still required the officer’s services.

They said it was so far third attempt by the Pakistan People’s Party-led federal government to transfer the officer whom the party allegedly dislikes for his ‘pro-active’ role in the case pertaining to torture of a school teacher. A former PPP MNA Aslam Midhyana was the prime accused in the case surfacing in March 2012, along with his seven accomplices.

The ED first transferred Dr Rizwan to Gilgit-Baltistan in July last year, but the chief justice of Pakistan took suo moto notice of the transfer and ordered its cancellation.

The government again issued transfer orders for Dr Rizwan, this time to Balochistan, with a plea that the officer should be relieved keeping in view shortage of officers in the area-wise largest province of the country.

The Punjab government challenged in the Supreme Court the random picking of the officer by the ED under inter-provincial rotation policy and got his name removed from the list of officers to be immediately sent out of the province.

A source close to Midhyana case said the former MNA who secured bail in the case in July 2012 was apparently ‘targeted’ by the police by unnecessarily adding Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) in the case usually lodged under the Section 324 of PPC. The ATA section was later deleted on the orders of a Lahore High Court division bench during hearing and the case was also transferred from the ATC to ordinary court.

The source said the federal government believed that Mr Midhyana, who is a relative of PPP MNA and Chairman Public Accounts Committee Pakistan Nadeem Afzal Chan, was implicated in the case as he was not present on the crime scene at the time of the incident. The Section 7 of the ATA was also added as an arm-twisting tactic, he added.

However, another source said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s provincial government on the other hand believed the torture was done at the behest of Midhyana and the DPO was being made a scapegoat by the federal government for ‘upholding merit’.

Midhyana has been on a bail since July last year while his seven accomplices are on judicial remand.

According to Sargodha police record, the trial had to be concluded in 30 days, but it has yet to be initiated in despite passing of five months.

About the legality of the ED’s orders, some police officers were of the view that federal government employees serving anywhere in the country could only be relieved by the provincial government concerned.

They said if the provincial government surrendered an officer to the federal government he or she was bound to report to the ED in a week or so.

Sargodha DPO Dr Muhammad Rizwan couldn’t be reached for comments.

Nabeela Ghazanfar, the spokeswoman of Punjab police, confirmed the Sargodha DPO was continuing with the posting as the provincial government had not yet relieved him against the requisition put up by the federal government. She said police authorities had yet to receive any orders in this regard.