TORONTO, Aug 14: A Toronto-based Pakistani diplomat is seeking political asylum in Canada, diplomatic sources told Dawn on Thursday morning.

Dr Naeem Ahmed, vice-consul at the Pakistani consulate general here, formally applied for asylum earlier this week. The Canadian government has informed Pakistan of the development.

Dr Naeem Ahmed was posted here nearly two years ago for a three-year term, but the sources said he was recently transferred back to Islamabad. Instead of returning home, he opted to stay back.

Dr Naeem could not be reached as nobody was picking up the phone at his residence. Reliable sources said the diplomat had shifted to a friend’s house.

Pakistan Consul-General Ghalib Iqbal declined to offer any comment saying: “I know this much that Dr Naeem was in the process of winding up and returning home.”

Qudssia Akhlaque adds from Islamabad: The Canadian authorities had conveyed Dr Naeem Ahmed’s request to the Pakistan government early this month in a communication through diplomatic channels, Foreign Office sources confirmed on Friday.

The foreign ministry has served a notice on the diplomat to return, the sources said, indicating that his services could be terminated if he failed to report back. The notice was served about a couple weeks back.

“It is very rare for officials posted in missions abroad to seek political asylum on being transferred back,” remarked a bureaucrat.

In 1994, the press counsellor at the Pakistan embassy in Washington, Malik Zahoor Ahmed, had refused to return and applied for political asylum in the US. When Mr Nawaz Sharif returned to power, Mr Zahoor Ahmed was re-instated and reappointed as press counsellor.

“Those who do not want to return merely use political asylum as a pretext to stay back, taking the cover of leniency behind a certain law,” a senior diplomat said.