Dismissal of SSP Mohammad Ali Nekokara of Islamabad police “on the grounds of proven charges constituting inefficiency and misconduct” is still an open question.

While the officer has the right to appeal against his dismissal by the end of April, the punitive order has thrown up many questions regarding what counts as misconduct.

Officer Nekokara and his friends claim that he is being punished for refusing to use force against the anti-government protesters that Dr Tahirul Qadri of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Imran Khan of the Pakistani Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) had massed on the Constitution Avenue in August last year to push their demand that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should resign.

Know more: Govt dismisses cop who refused to use force against PAT, PTI protesters

When the PAT and PTI announced in the last week of August their workers would march on the Prime Minister’s House, SSP Nekokara, who was operation commander of the police force assembled in the Red Zone area, met and also wrote to the secretary interior opposing the use of force in the charged atmosphere. Armed action by “a loosely integrated force of police units from Punjab, Islamabad, Azad Kashmir and the Railways, Levies and Rangers on a crowd of thousands that include women and children entails serious risk of misuse of authority and disproportionate force,” the officer warned.

On August 27, SSP Nekokara sent a note to the men under his command that he had received assurances that force is not to be used.

However, when the PAT-PTI activists surged toward the Prime Minister’s House on August 30, it turned into a violent clash. Police beat back the protesters with batons and heavy teargas shelling.

But who ordered whom what looked “excessive use of force” remains a moot point, if not a mystery, till today.

Officer Nekokara was at the spot but went on leave the next day. A few days later the interior secretary ordered him to report to the Establishment Division. Subsequently, an inquiry was initiated against him in November, the main charge being that he refused to obey an order from his seniors. Eventually, that probe ended in his dismissal.

But the officer’s supporters say that law requires that orders to use force against a charged crowd have to come from the deputy commissioner of the area and the then Islamabad DC was not present at the scene on August 30.

Legal minds also point out that the Police Act 1863, operative in Islamabad, says that “anything done in good faith is not an offence” and Criminal Procedure Code does not hold the acts of good faith punishable. But then there also exists the well-known term “orders from the above”, though, that lower-level or ambitious officials often use to justify carrying out unjust or unlawful wishes of political rulers or top bureaucrats, conveyed only verbally.

Just recall what Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah said in his address to civil servants in Peshawar in April 1948. He said: “The first thing that I want to tell you is that you should never be influenced by any political pressure, by any political party or any individual politician.

“If you want to raise the prestige and greatness of Pakistan you must not fall victim to any pressure but do your duty as servants of the people and the state, fearlessly and honestly.

“May be some of you may fall victim for not satisfying the whims of ministers. I hope it does not happen, but you may even be put to trouble not because you are doing anything wrong but because you are doing right.”

If that is a voice lost in time, only recently the Supreme Court ruled that “it is not in contention that civil servants are public servants and are, therefore, meant to take decisions only in accordance with law in the public interest.”

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2015

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