Former Supreme Court judge Faqir Muhammad Khokhar, who was recently appointed as the new chairman of an inquiry panel on enforced disappearances, died on Wednesday due to prolonged illness, his family said.
It emerged last week that the government had appointed Justice Khokhar as the new chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearance (CIED), replacing Javed Iqbal who had been heading the panel since September 2011. Justice Khokhar’s son, Tahir Mehmood, confirmed to the media that his father passed away today due to a prolonged illness. The former SC judge had been admitted to Lahore’s Services Hospital for the past 12 days and was battling cancer, Mehmood said.
According to an obituary issued by the Lahore High Court (LHC), the retired judge’s funeral will be held at 4:15pm today after Asr prayers at a mosque in Phase 8 of the city’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA).
Justice Khokhar was one of the four judges who, out of the 19 SC judges back then, had taken oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) after the proclamation of the state of emergency by former dictator Gen (retired) Pervez Musharraf in 2007.
The judge had served as the acting chief election commissioner of Pakistan in 2008, according to a press release issued then by the Election Commission of Pakistan.
In August 2009, then-president Asif Ali Zardari accepted Justice Khokhar’s resignation, as he and Justice M. Javaid Buttar faced the prospect of being questioned by the Supreme Judicial Council for taking oath under the PCO.
The former SC judge had also been appointed by the Pakistan Cricket Board as an independent adjudicator on Umar Akmal’s appeal in his spot-fixing case in 2020. According to a 2002 SC judgement, Justice Khokhar was serving as secretary of the Law, Justice and Human Rights Division at the time of his elevation to the apex court.