Daily Times

It was 1982-83 when a senior Martial Law officer in Hyderabad overstepped his authority and propriety both. He was reasonably well placed in the hierarchy and had the right connections to late President Zia’s inner circle.

Somewhere in 1982, a general decision was taken to round up ‘anti-social’ elements in Sindh. Long lists were prepared with the help of police, civil administration and intelligence agencies. Perhaps Islamabad had got the wind of Movement for Restoration of Democracy’s (MRD’s) planned mass movement of non-cooperation and political agitation. These lists were vetted and a copy retained at the deputy martial law administrator’s (DMLA’s) headquarters. Thousands of arrest warrants were issued; the jails overflowed with détenu. The job seemed to have been well done but only when one morning two respectable looking women appeared in tears at the DMLA Hyderabad complaint office, a dreadful story unfolded.

Briefly, that senior officer had connived with a local Talpur political influential to gobble up a few very expensive acres of Heerabad Real Estate next to the city that belonged to a highly respected senior citizen. The audacious plan was hatched in collusion with the old man’s vagrant son whom he had thrown out on account of his incorrigibility and officially declared him ineligible to inherit any property from him. The deal was that they will help him obtain his share of land and, in turn, he will gift them half of the share which could fetch a couple of million rupees in those days. The rogue and his father were brought to a lower martial law office through police where the old man was made to beg his renegade son’s pardon under very humiliating arrangements. But he refused to part with the property. This resulted in the old man being put behind bars on a manufactured arrest warrant, forgetting that original lists received at DMLA’s headquarters did not contain his name. That proved the officer’s undoing during an enquiry, which was duly ordered. The officer was removed, given a sack and eventually left the service.

This was not the only case against him; there were better known but unproven ones that circulated in the city about his impingements on justice and good governance. The inevitable law of retribution came into full swing a little later. His sons had a genetic deficiency in that their skin pores had not fully developed requiring them to exert as little as was possible. In the following years, one believes this debility, unfortunately, aggravated to the extent that they had to be kept in totally air-conditioned and inactivity state. In the meanwhile, his daughter suffered a peculiar nerve disease attack in which one of her eyelids had drooped permanently due to an irreversible nerve failure.

Unlimited power is dangerous, but borrowed glory under the shadow of real power is simply devastating, especially if it is worn by men of inadequate depth. They soon get out of their element, tossing courtesy, civility and respect for the law out of the window. Decent, self-respecting and hardworking people are the first to get the boot. The next thing that they do is to surround themselves and their masters with dense witted knaves, fake and the phoney. This is a familiar central picture, wherever and whenever a power is doomed to fall.

Mir Rasul Bux Talpur had passed away; his body was flown for burial to Hyderabad. Late General Zia was to attend the funeral. Therefore, everybody who was anybody in the civil and political hierarchy wanted to be present in addition to DMLA Hyderabad and governor Sindh, who had to be there under the protocol.

From airport to the late Mir’s house were long lines of gleaming official cars of all descriptions. Ministers and senior bureaucrats were vying for as close a place in the queue to the chief martial law administrator as their drivers and vehicles could possibly manage. It caused accidents, a few rows and much heartburn. The sight was sadly comic. Pathological self-seekers need always reassure themselves of their importance in the design of prevalent power regardless of the brazenness of the effort or tumbling over the other man’s trough.

When the motorcade moved from the airport, I had to sit in governor Sindh’s official car being a staff officer to DMLA Hyderabad. Governor Sindh and DMLA were accompanying President Zia in his car. The governor’s car was next in the line; the driver could not cover Pakistan’s flag on the bonnet nor the star plates as they moved in a hurry. In any case, there were outriders, escort vehicles and pilot cars with their flashing beacons and blaring sirens enough to cause a head swell.

The president’s motorcade sped through the narrow and crowded roads at breakneck speed to the Mir’s house in old Hyderabad suburbs. People on the roadside began to look like small specks, faceless and insignificant. A surge of self-importance began to crawl up my skin and a torrent of inflated ego or, more appropriately, a false sense of superiority started to form in the head. With great effort I recovered from this fatal mirage. If borrowed glory could be so noxious, real power should simply be lethal.

Commissioner Hyderabad Abdullah G Memon was an experienced and a brilliant civil service officer with considerable power of absorption and necessary resilience. One would sometimes marvel at his presence of mind and self-confidence in handling some very tricky situations, particularly where it had anything to do with anti-regime elements and direct orders from martial law authorities. He managed to maintain his balance without moving into the line of fire. Of all the great and mighty civil service officers that I came across as DMLA’s staff officer, he and Wahidy (then superintendent police Hyderabad) were just about the only ones who could invariably stand up to late President Zia and governor Sindh to argue their point on sensitive issues with perfect composure. This gifted civil servant later rose to become a federal minister in President Leghari’s interim government and, as expected, gave a very honourable account of himself.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army. He can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com