Damning Najafi report puts Punjab govt in a tight spot

• Tribunal sees cover-up after Model Town ‘massacre’ • Says police did what they had been sent to do • CM Shahbaz ‘never ordered police to disengage’ LAHORE: The government of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif was delivered a serious blow on Tuesday when the contents of the Justice Ali Baqir Najafi report were made public on orders of the Lahore High Court. Recalling the gruesome events of June 17, 2014 in Model Town, Lahore, the one-man judicial tribunal, constituted to ascertain the facts and fix responsibility on the perpetrators, observed that the Punjab police had done exactly what “it went for”. The police, it said, had “actively” participated in the “massacre”, and keeping in view the “facts and circumstances, the reader of the report can easily fix the responsibility of the unfortunate incident”. The tribunal, which investigated the killings of 14 Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) workers in Model Town, accused the Punjab government of concealing facts and hindering the investigation, while its officials tried to cover up for each other, preventing the tribunal from arriving at a definitive conclusion. Dismissing the Punjab government’s appeal, a three-judge LHC bench ordered that the Najafi report be made public. Ever since the report was submitted to the Punjab government on Aug 9, 2014, there have been incessant calls to make the report public even as the government remained reluctant to share the contents. In its order on Tuesday, the LHC asked the Punjab government: “The copy of the inquiry report of Tribunal shall be supplied to the respondents for their information, by concerned official, forthwith. The inquiry report of the Tribunal shall be published by the concerned authorities within 30 days from the announcement of this judgement.” Later in the afternoon, the provincial government uploaded the report on one of its websites bringing to end speculation about whether the government would challenge the LHC order in the Supreme Court. The unveiling of the report drew contrasting responses from the PAT and the government. While the PAT leadership welcomed the LHC order, those standing by the Shahbaz administration, including the police force which was at the fore of the action that day, tried to play down the possible ramifications of the report by insisting that it had no legal implications. The 132-page report recommends that the Punjab government draw up legislation to empower the magistracy to issue orders to fire at such occasions so that the responsibility for any such unfortunate incident could be clearly fixed in the future. In its conclusions, the report noted that a meeting was held on June 16 (a day before the incident), which was attended by then law minister Rana Sanaullah, the chief secretary, home secretary, the commissioner of Lahore and the capital city police officer (CCPO) and representatives of the special branch. They decided “not to allow Tahirul Qadri to fulfil his objective (a sit-in in capital, which he had announced for June 23).” It was the Lahore commissioner who pointed out that the “barriers” around Minhajul Quran were illegal and he “treated them as encroachment”. The chair (Mr Sanaullah) decided that those barriers must be removed and Tauqeer Shah (then secretary to the CM) “consented on behalf of the chief minister”.