Islamabad: Pakistan`s Supreme Court on Monday
directed the federal Interior Secretary to appear before it on
October 11 to explain why authorities had not yet arrested the
killers of a retired legal official of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
province.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar
Chaudhry, who has taken up several cases related to the
functioning of the government, issued the directive while
hearing a suo moto case related to the murder of former
provincial Advocate General and retired judge Muhammad Sardar
Khan.
The Chief Justice asked the Additional Secretary of
the Interior Ministry, who appeared before the bench, why the
Interior Secretary could not appear in court.
The Additional Secretary informed the court that the
Secretary was on leave.
Islamabad police chief Syed Kaleem Imam told the court
that police had reached close to the assassins of Khan and
they would be arrested very soon.
The bench, however, observed that police had not made
serious efforts to arrest the killers and that Imam had done
nothing yet in the case.
Imam sought more time from the court to arrest the
killers but the Chief Justice rejected his contentions,
observing that several months had passed since the murder of
the noted lawyer.
Police could not arrest the killers and this was a
"visible failure" of the force, the Chief Justice said. Khan
was killed in Islamabad in February.
He was shot dead when he resisted an attempt by
unidentified men to kidnap him.
PTI
