PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday removed from service a senior civil judge, Nadeem Mohammad, serving at Battagram, on charges of misconduct and corruption.

According to a press release issued here, the judge, who was earlier serving as senior civil judge at Peshawar, was asked for explanation consequent upon observation and certain directions issued by a division bench of the high court in a writ petition titled ‘Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and others versus Roohullah and others’.

As his reply was not satisfactory, the competent authority proceeded against him under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government Servants (Efficiency and Discipline) Rules, 2011.

It is stated that the inquiry was conducted into the allegations of misconduct and corruption against the officer under the said rules and the inquiry officer had held him culpable.

It was added that neither the written reply of the accused officer, which he submitted in response to the final show-cause notice, nor his personal audience could lessen the magnitude of his guilt.

It was stated that the competent authority was pleased to hold that acts of the accused officer, who consistently earned adverse remarks in performance evaluation reports, tantamount to misconduct and indulgence in corruption, hence keeping him in the judicial service was highly uncalled-for and undesirable, and thus while imposing the major penalty of removal from service as envisaged under rule 4 (1) (b) (iii) of the said rules, the accused officer was removed from service with immediate effect.

Earlier, the high court had also removed from service a civil judge cum judicial magistrate, Niamatullah Khan, on May 28, on charges of misconduct.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2016