August 5, 2002	Monday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 25,1423

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LAHORE, Aug 4: Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool on Sunday suspended the administrator and other officials concerned of the Badshahi Mosque due to the theft of the slippers of Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)).

During a visit to the historic mosque on Saturday after his return from umra pilgrimage, the governor had inspected the gallery where Islamic relics had been displaced and checked the security arrangements.

He directed the Lahore district police officer and the Auqaf secretary to investigate the matter without showing any leniency. “This is a test case for police,” he asked DPO Javed Noor, directing him to recover the slippers and arrest the culprits.

Showing his displeasure over the incident, the governor warned the Auqaf secretary that he would be punished if proved that he had shown any dereliction.

He said the stealing of the slippers was not an ordinary event as people tended to sacrifice their lives over such happenings. The event had indicated weakness of the government and the entire country was criticizing it. “And I think that this criticism is valid,” he said.

He asked the authorities concerned to issue appeals so that the culprits would themselves return the slippers.

The governor directed the Auqaf secretary to beef up security to ensure the protection of relics at Data Darbar and other places.

Meanwhile, the governor also met with a 36-member delegation of ulema and mashaikh who called on him under the leadership of religious scholar Haji Muhammad Hanif Tayyab at the Governor House.

He told the delegation that President Pervez Musharraf and his colleagues had served Islam by discouraging those sowing seeds of discord in society in the name of religion.

He said it was required to present to the world the real face of Islam through modern technology and methods instead of promoting it through extremism.

Dispelling the impression of imposing restrictions on religious seminaries, he said the government had no plans to mould the students of these seminaries to a certain direction.

The ulema should expand their frame of reference and open the doors of their seminaries to modern knowledge, he emphasised. It was the earnest desire of the government that graduates of these seminaries should also become doctors and engineers and gain positions in the competitive civil service, he said.