PESHAWAR: The parents and other relatives of the martyred students of Army Public School (APS), Peshawar, have again raised the demand for constitution of a judicial commission under the supervision of a Supreme Court judge to probe into the Dec 16, 2014 attack and award exemplary punishment to those involved in the brutal act.

Speaking at a press conference organised by Shuhada Army Public School Forum at Peshawar Press Club on Thursday, Palwasha Amin, sister of a martyred student, said that despite the passage to two and a half years to the incident the victims’ families were yet to get justice.

She held the federal and provincial governments responsible for the incident in which over 144 children along with staff members were killed. She said that the rulers were least bothered to conduct inquiry into the incident.

“We want constitution of a judicial commission under the supervision of an apex court judge to probe into the incident and award exemplary punishment to the people involved in the attack,” said Palwasha.

Mehwish Tariq, a sister of another martyred student, expressed apprehensions about delaying tactics to deliver justice to the victims’ families.

She said that they had shared some credible information with the officials of police department regarding the attack, but no action was taken.

She said that the KP Right to Information Commission had turned down the request of APS forum for provision of information about the Peshawar attack, citing sensitive nature of the case. She said that the inquiry report regarding the Army Public School attack was stuck in the KP chief minister’s office.

Hafsa Durrani, another relative of a martyred student, said that the main cause of occurrence of the incident was poor security arrangements and both the federal and provincial governments were responsible for the lapse.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2017