Sindh Police chief and eight high ranking officers applied for 30-days leave in protest over the incident in which IG Sindh was allegedly “ridiculed and mishandled.” An Additional IG, seven Deputy IGs and one SSP also applied for leave over the incident.
However, later on Tuesday night, following conversations with the government and other members of the force, Sindh IGP Mushtaq Mahar decided to defer his own leave and ordered his officers to defer their leave applications for ten days as well for the sake of “the larger national interest”.
All leave applications, which The Correspondent.pk obtained, has similar content: “In the wake of media reports where it has been reported that High Command of Sindh Police has been ridiculed and mishandled.”
These police officers stated that this incident has made difficult for them to perform their duties. Those who had applied for leaves were Saqib Ismail DIG Head Quarter, Naeem Ahmed Sheikh, DIG Hyderabad, retired Capt. Asim Khan. Sindh Police Special Branch Additional Inspector General (AIG) Imran Yaqoob on Tuesday also applied for a two-month leave in an apparent protest against the recent episode of registration of a case against PML-N leader Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar.
The Sindh Police took to Twitter to share these developments in a post late on Tuesday night.
The thread read: “The unfortunate incident that occurred on the night of 18/19 October caused great heartache and resentment within all ranks of Sindh police.”
“As a result, Sindh IG decided to proceed on leave and subsequently all ranks decided that they would also apply for leave to protest the humiliation meted out to Sindh police. This was a spontaneous and heartfelt reaction and made on an individual rather than a collective basis because every single member of the department felt an acute sense of disrespect.”
“Sindh Police is immensely grateful to the Army Chief for realising the sense of hurt that prevailed within a uniformed force, and for promptly ordering an inquiry into the matter which he has also assured will be impartial”. The force said it was also grateful to Bilawal and Sindh CM “for coming to the IG House and showing solidarity with the police leadership”.
“Sindh police has always been a disciplined force which believes in institutional harmony between all key national institutions and has always been cognisant of its responsibility to serve and protect the citizens of this province and thus, keeping this in mind, Sindh IG has decided to defer his own leave and ordered his officers to set aside their leave applications for ten days in the larger national interest, pending the conclusion of the inquiry.”
PPP co-chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari also tweeted his support for the police officers’ protest.
Safdar – the son-in-law of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif – was arrested from a hotel room in Karachi Monday morning for allegedly disrespecting the mausoleum of the Founder of the Nation, only to be released by a court hours later.
Safdar, who was in Karachi along with his wife Maryam Nawaz to attend the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) rally, had chanted slogans at the mausoleum of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah when he paid a visit to the place on Sunday along with other party leaders ahead of the rally.
The ISPR statement regarding the inquiry into incident came minutes after Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari called on institutions to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest of PML-N leader retired Captain Safdar in Karachi on Monday.
