PESHAWAR: The father of a student martyred in the 2014 Army Public School (APS) carnage on Saturday moved the Peshawar High Court seeking to initiate contempt proceedings against several state functionaries for not implementing the court’s earlier order of conducting trial of a former spokesperson for the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Ehsanullah Ehsan, who has now allegedly escaped from custody.

The petitioner, Advocate Fazal Khan, filed a contempt of court petition contending that the respondents had blatantly violated the directions given to them in an earlier petition filed by him against the alleged plan of the then government to give clemency to Ehsan, who had surrendered himself to an intelligence agency in April 2017.

The respondents in the petition are senior government and security officials.

On Feb 6, an audio message purportedly of Ehsan surfaced on social media wherein he claimed that he had escaped from custody of security forces. Before his surrender Ehsan was affiliated with another proscribed organisation, Jamaatul Ahrar, a splinter group of TTP.

Says court order of trying Ehsanullah Ehsan has not been followed

On April 25, 2018, a bench of the high court had disposed of the earlier petition of Fazal Khan after a deputy attorney general, Mussaratullah Khan, had assured the court that the government had no plan to give clemency to Ehsan. He had stated that presently Ehsan was under investigation and would be tried subsequently by a military court.

The court had then ordered that Ehsan should not be set free without completion of his trial.

The petitioner states that his elder son Sahibzada Umer Khan was among those 148 students and staffers of the APS who were killed in the Dec 16, 2016, terrorist attack.

Since then, the petitioner states, he has been making hectic efforts to ensure that the culprits behind one of the darkest days in the history of this province are brought to justice so that children of other parents do not go through the unimaginable ordeal suffered by the petitioner.

The petitioner claims that the very next day the proscribed TTP had accepted responsibility of the occurrence. He states that after almost three years of the occurrence, the principal accused, Ehsan, had surrendered or was captured by law enforcing agencies, which had given him some hope.

He contends that he was surprised when Ehsan was portrayed by the agencies as an unaware, innocent and brainwashed man who had inadvertently masterminded terrorist activities in the province.

Fazal Khan contends that he had then filed a writ petition wherein a statement at the bar was given by the respondents to the effect that terrorist Ehsan would be tried by a military court and would not be granted clemency.

He states that now it has come to limelight that instead of trying Ehsan he was provided a luxurious home from which he has made good his escape.

The petitioner contends that sufficient time has passed since the order of the high court but unfortunately the respondents through their inactions and/or omissions have categorically flouted the order hence the instant petition is filed.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2020