In 1957, Asghar Khan became the first native Commander-in-Chief of PAF. After retiring from the PAF, he became the president of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) which he headed until 1968. In 1970, Khan founded the Tehreek-e-Istiqlal, but the party could not cause any dent in the vote bank of major parties of the time, particularly the Pakistan People's Party. In 2012, Khan merged his party with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
He authored several books, including an autobiography, titled "My Political Struggle," in 2008. "Air Marshal Asghar Khan headed the PAF diligently and with courage. With his leadership capabilities, he played a vital role in transforming the PAF into a modern air force," the present Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman said in a press release.
The late air chief will also be remembered for the famous Asghar Khan case in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. On October 19, 2012, the apex court issued a 141-page verdict, ordering legal proceedings against former army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg and former ISI chief Lieutenant General Durrani in a case filed 16 years ago by Asghar Khan. Khan had petitioned the Supreme Court in 1996 alleging that the two senior army officers and the then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan had doled out Rs 140 million among several politicians ahead of the 1990 polls with a view to ensuring Benazir Bhutto's defeat in the polls. The Islamic Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), consisting of nine parties including the Pakistan Muslim League, National Peoples Party and Jamaat-e-Islami, had won the 1990 elections, with Nawaz Sharif being elected prime minister. The alliance had been formed to oppose the Benazir Bhutto-led Pakistan Peoples Party.
In 1996, Khan had written a letter to the then Supreme Court Chief Justice Nasim Hassan Shah naming Beg, Durrani and Younis Habib, the ex-Habib Bank Sindh chief and owner of Mehran Bank, about the unlawful disbursement of public money and its misuse for political purposes.
The 2012 apex court judgment, authored by the then-Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry, had directed the Federal Investigation Agency to initiate a transparent investigation and subsequent trial if sufficient evidence is found against the former army officers. That investigation is yet to conclude. In May 2017, the PTI had said it would approach the Supreme Court over the FIA's failure to follow through on the apex court's order in the case.
The following are excerpts from Wikipedia:
Asghar Khan retired three star rank air force general who served as the first native Commander in Chief of thePakistan Air Force (PAF) under President Iskander Mirza and under President Ayub Khan until resigning in 1965 prior to the start of the air operations of the PAF during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. Mohammad Asghar Khan was born in Jammu, Kashmir and Jammu (princely state) in British India on 17 January 1921. His father was Brigadier Thakur Rahmatullah Khan, a Pathan officer of the Jammu & Kashmir State Forces, who was from Tirah, Northern Pakistan. His mother's name was Ghulam Fatima. Asghar Khan and all his brothers, except his youngest brother, joined the armed forces of Pakistan, after the family relocated to Abbottabad during partition.
Initially commissioned in the Indian Army, Asghar Khan was drafted into Indian Air Force in 1940, seeing actions in Burma Campaign and was later sent to United Kingdom where he graduated from RAF Staff College at Bracknell, completing his collegiate courses from Joint Service Defence College and post-graduate studies from Imperial Defence College. Upon return to British India, Asghar Khan resumed his active duty with the Royal Indian Air Force and opted for Pakistan following the independence in 1947, and settled in West-Pakistan. Asghar Khan became first commandant of Pakistan Air Force Academy in 1947 and was also the first to head the Directorate-General for Air Operations (DGAO) in 1950. Finally in 1957, Asghar Khan became the youngest to-date and the first native Air Force Commander-in-Chief of PAF. His tenure as air commander saw the extensive modernization of the PAF.
After leaving the Ministry of Defence, Asghar Khan gave vehement criticism and blamed President Ayub Khan and Foreign Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto for the causes of the 1965 war with India, and later turned his criticism towards General Yahya Khan for the 1971 war failure, which resulted in the break-up of Pakistan.
While imprisoned, Asghar Khan wrote a much criticized letter to the leadership of Defence Forces, asking them to renounce their support for the "Illegal regime of Bhutto", and asked the military leadership to "differentiate between a "lawful and an unlawful" command... and save Pakistan.". This letter is considered by historians as instrumental in encouraging the advent of the far-right Zia regime. However in a television show, Asghar Khan strongly defended his letter as according to him "nowhere in the letter had he asked for the military to take over", and he had written it in response to a news story that he had read in which a Major had shot a civilian showing him the "V sign". After the overthrow of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's government by the military in the summer of 1977, Asghar Khan was offered a cabinet post by General Zia-ul-Haq, Asghar Khan refused to join the cabinet and also withdrew from the PNA after a growing split between the various parties.