PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday ordered the provincial government to pay compensation fixed for the police personnel to legal heirs of a Christian policeman, who had died in twin suicide blasts at a church in 2013.

A bench consisting of Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Musarrat Hilali accepted a petition filed by Christiana Imtiaz, wife of martyred policeman Imtiaz Riad, to seek Shuhada Package (compensation), which is normally given away to the policeman killed in the line of duty.

The policeman was killed along with around 100 other members of the Christian community when two suicide bombers blew themselves up inside the All Saints Church in Kohati area on Sept 22, 2013.

Imtiaz had died in 2013 Peshawar church blasts

The petitioner’s counsel, Zarak Arif Shah, said that Imtiaz Riaz was appointed a special police officer to the police department in 2010 and that he was present at the All Saints Church during the 2013 suicide bombings.

He said that his client had approached the provincial government seeking Shuhada Package fixed for policemen.

Mr Shah, however, said that despite his client’s continuous efforts, the government was reluctant to pay the due compensation to her.

He produced a notification of the provincial finance department issued on March 16, 2015, for the provision of uniformed Shuhada Package to the legal heirs of the martyred provincial police personnel and such others in the service of the provincial government.

The counsel contended that under that package, the petitioner had to be paid Rs3.3 million as compensation.

An additional advocate general pointed out that the petitioner’s husband was not in the regular police force and was appointed as the special police officer on the contractual basis.

He said that the deceased was also not on duty at the time of the blasts and he had gone to the said church to attend the Sunday service there.

The additional advocate general said that the legal heirs of the deceased had already been paid Rs500,000 compensation each by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh governments.

Advocate Zarak said that nowhere in the said compensation policy, it was mentioned that the compensation would not be paid to contractual employees.

He added that it was also not a condition that the compensation would be paid only to those employees or personnel who were on duty.

The counsel argued that by not paying Shuhada Package to the legal heirs of the deceased police personnel, the petitioner had been discriminated against by the provincial government.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2022