Daily Times

A single-member judicial commission has completed the investigation into the massacre at the Army Public School in 2014 and is expected to submit its report to the Supreme Court by the end of this month.

“Peshawar High Court judge Mohammad Ibrahim Khan of the Judiciary Commission recorded the statements of about 140 people, including injured students, parents of student martyrs and the army and police officials, and reviewed investigations by police and security agencies, “a commission official, Imranullah Khan, told reporters on Wednesday.

He said the commission was finalizing the investigation report and submitting it to the Supreme Court by the end of June.

During the closed-door proceedings here, some parents also asked the commission to summon former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the former army chief, General Raheel Sharif. However, the commission denied the request declaring the appearance of the two before it was unnecessary.

The commission was formed by the Peshawar High Court on Oct 12, 2018, on the Supreme Court’s orders. It had become functional on Oct 19, 2018.

Among the key army officers, whose statements were recorded by the probe body, were former Peshawar corps commander Lt-General Hidayatur Rehman, then chairman of Army Public Educational Institutions (APEI) BoG Brigadier Mudassir Azam, officer of 102 Brigade, HQ-11 Corps, Brigadier Inayatullah, Major Dr Asim Shehzad of Army Medical Corps, and secretary of the BoG Colonel Hazrat Bilal.

The commission also recorded statements of some senior police officials, including former provincial police officers Salahuddin Mehsud and Nasir Durrani, former DIG of counterterrorism department Alam Shinwari, former home and tribal affairs secretary Syed Akhtar Ali Shah, former capital city police officer Ijaz Khan, former SP (cantonment) Faisal Shehzad and former SP (city) Mustafa Tanveer, and others.

Appearance of some army officers was delayed last year due to Indo-Pak border tensions.

The then Supreme Court chief justice, Mian Saqib Nisar, had taken notice of the matter in Apr 2018 during a visit to Peshawar when several parents of the APS students martyred by militants on campus had approached him with a request to address their grievances.

They had called for the fixing of the responsibility of negligence, which led to the massacre.

The parents questioned why proper security measures were not adopted after the National Counter Terrorism Authority had informed different provincial and federal authorities on Aug 28, 2014, that militants of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan would carry out attacks against the Army Public School and College and other educational institutions run by the Pakistan Army.