The minister, however, repeatedly dismissed the report as defective during the media talk. "The report is defective in the eye of law because it is based on secondary evidence, which is not admissible as per the Evidence Act," Sanaullah said. He accused Pakistan Awami Tehreek's leader Tahir ul Qadri (PAT) of creating a fuss over the [Model Town incident] report.
He stated that the Punjab government had filed an intra-court appeal against the September 21 decision of a single-bench ordering the release of the inquiry report, authored by LHC Justice Baqar Najafi.
Rana Sanaullah in his media talk termed the report inconclusive claiming that it fails to fix responsibility for the incident on any member of government or law enforcement agencies. He said that the report also mentions that PAT workers resisted the police crackdown, which was the reason a clash took place.
Sanaullah said: "The report concludes that 'the reader of this report may easily be able to fix responsibility for a responsible for the incident'." He added that he had never seen any report which does not itself fix responsibility but asks the reader to do it. Sanaullah also revealed that a one-man inquiry tribunal comprising former LHC chief justice Khalilur Rehman Khan had suggested that the Punjab government refused to accept the report because it could fan sectarianism.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017