TOBA TEK SINGH: Kamalia Municipal Committee Chairman Malik Muhammad Sharif has informed the UK’s Ministry of Justice through a letter that arrangements had been made to reinter the remains of Chaudhry Rehmat Ali at the Jamia Islamia Anwar-i-Mustafa, Muhammad Shah Road, Kamalia, after their repatriation from a cemetery in Cambridge.

Muhammad Sarwar Noor, a British-Pakistani who originally belonged to Kamalia, had submitted an application to the Cambridge City Council on Oct 12, stating that the late Chaudhry Rehmat Ali, who coined name of Pakistan, had died in Cambridge on Feb 3, 1951. He was buried there temporarily and his remains could not be shifted to Pakistan. He told the council that as a Pakistani he wanted to take the remains of Chaudhry Rehmat Ali back to his hometown of Kamalia.

In reply to his request, the Cambridge City Council informed Mr Noor on Oct 30 that a licence for the exhumation of the remains from Chaudhry Rehmat Ali’s grave was granted by the Ministry of Justice in 2005 on the application of Pakistani high commissioner but it expired in 2006. One of the conditions required for issuance of a new licence for exhumation of the body was to confirm to the authority the place for burial of the remains.

Mr Noor had written a letter to Mr Sharif, the Kamalia MC chairman, for issuance of confirmation certificate about the place of burial who, after selection of site of burial, issued the confirmation letter for further proceedings in the UK.

Mr Noor told this correspondent on telephone from the UK that funeral prayers would be offered for Chaudhry Rehmat Ali after exhumation of his remains in which he wanted to invite Cambridge MP Daniel Zelchner, Mid Norfolk MP George Freeman, former PM Nawaz Sharif, PTI chairman Imran Khan, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan and Pakistani High Commissioner Syed Ibne Abbas.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2017