LAHORE: A bailiff of the Civil Court came to arrest Pakistan Hockey Federation secretary Rana Mujahid at the National Hockey Stadium in Lahore on Wednesday for constantly remaining absent in a case filed by previous PHF secretary Haider Hussain

Haider in the said case filed last year had claimed that he is the genuine secretary of the federation and Mujahid had illegally occupied the position.

At 2:00pm, the bailiff entered the PHF offices and asked about the whereabouts of Mujahid in order to arrest him for not attending the civil court hearing in Lahore.

However, Mujahid is currently in Islamabad, where the National Junior Hockey Championship is in progress.

Last year, Tariq Hussain Bugti in controversial circumstances took charge as PHF president while then president retired Brig Khalid Sajjad Khokhar asserted that he was the legal president of the federation.

Khokhar also claimed that his secretary Haider had tendered the resignation. However, Haider did not admit that he resigned and moved the civil court and got a stay order against Khokhar’s claim.

Khokhar, in defiance of the court’s stay order, brought in Mujahid as PHF secretary in place of Haider.

However, later Bugti was appointed as PHF president by caretaker prime minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar in place of Khokhar. Bugti with the support of the government succeeded to enter the PHF headquarters to start working as president and brought Haider back as secretary.

However, after a couple of months, Bugti met Khokhar in Islamabad after which the latter withdrew his case from the Islamabad High Court in which he had claimed that he was the genuine PHF president. As a result, Bugti succeeded to become the sole claimant as PHF chief.

But according to sources, in return for relinquishing the PHF hot seat to Bugti, Khokhar got the consent of Bugti that he would not work with Haider as secretary, who was seeking to fast-track the FIA inquiry into the corruption cases identified from 2008 to 2022 in which Qasim Zia, Akhtar Rasool and Khokhar worked as PHF president and Asif Bajwa (twice), Shahbaz Senior and Mujahid functioned as secretary.

There are around 111 cases of financial corruption against PHF officials concerned pending with the FIA, involving millions of rupees.

Interestingly, Bugti accepted Mujahid as PHF secretary while removing Haider. But Haider continued fighting his case in the Civil Court, which has now finally ordered the arrest of Mujahid, for not appearing before the court to defend his case.

A couple of hours later on Wednesday, Bugti addressing a press conference alongside Akhtar Rasool said if there was any case against Mujahid, he would appear before the court.

Defending Mujahid, Bugti said that he held the PHF Congress meeting twice, which endorsed Mujahid as secretary of the federation.

Haider, on the other hand, adopted the stance that no member from Sindh and Balochistan was present in those two Congress meetings.

Bugti at the presser further said that the daily allowances of the national team players would be cleared in the next couple of days, adding that the team would tour China in November.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2024