PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court has ordered reinstatement of nine judicial officers after eight years of their removal from service orders, which were set aside last year by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Subordinate Judiciary Service Tribunal.

The reinstated judicial officers include four additional district and sessions judges Riffat Aamir, Malik Amjid Rahim, Qaiser Rahim and Manzoor Qadir; four senior civil judges Safeer Qaiser Malik, Adil Akbar Khan, Rashid Rauf Swati and Shah Hussain; and a civil judge Tasawar Hussain.

A notification was issued in this regard by PHC registrar, stating that in pursuance of the judgement of Subordinate Judiciary Service Tribunal of July 26, 2024, and recommendations of the administration committee of high court given in a meeting on April 8, 2025, the competent authority (chief justice) reinstated the said judicial officers.

However, the notification provided that their reinstatement would be without any back benefits and would be subject to the outcome of de-novo inquiry proceedings against them as well as pending appeals filed by the high court before Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Their removal orders were set aside by relevant service tribunal last year

While terminating their services along with two other judicial officers in April 2017, the high court announced that those judges had violated disciplinary law. At that time, Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi was the chief justice of the high court.

The high court had declared that after those judicial officers were found guilty, the chief justice with the concurrence of the administration committee imposed the major penalty of removal from service on them.

Last year, the service tribunal ordered reinstatement of 11 judicial officers including the present nine officers and a district and sessions judge Sardar Mohammad Irshad and an additional district and sessions judge Abdul Hakim Hashmi.

However, as Sardar Irshad attained the age of superannuation and Abdul Hakim Hashmi recently expired, therefore, their names were not included in the present notification.

Initially, a tribunal comprising Justice Syed Mohammad Attique Shah (now acting chief justice) and Justice Shakeel Ahmad (now judge of Supreme Court) had given a split judgement leading to referral of appeals to a referee judge Justice Mohammad Naeem Anwar, who decided it in favour of the appellants.

The judgement was challenged before the apex court by the high court, but so far the apex court had not granted any stay order to the high court.

The appellants (judicial officers) had contended that they were suspended in April 2017 under Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government Servants (Efficiency and Disciplinary) Rules, 2011, while show-cause notices were served on them later over allegations about their general reputation, social contacts and conduct.

They said that on the basis of the show-cause notices, the appellants had been proceeded against and awarded major penalty of removal from service. They said that show-cause notices were mostly alleged to have been issued on basis of opinion drawn by the administrative committee against the appellants for having adverse entries recorded in some of their performance evaluation report, which they had already challenged.

They argued that adverse entries in respect of general reputation and conduct in the PER had been recorded by the committee without conducting any regular inquiry, which could confront the said allegations to the appellants.

They stated that in their cases, neither any charge sheet nor statement of allegations had been issued, which was a mandatory requirement of law.

They contended that there were no specific allegations against them and merely on the basis of general allegations no major penalty could be imposed on them.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2025