Police raided Attorney General Mansoor Usman Awan’s Sarwar Road home at night, citing an address mix-up. Servants were roughed up, flowerpots damaged, and suspensions followed.
The times seem harsh for Awans.
Mukhtar Awan died at the age of 85, leaving the Awan biradari without one of its most prominent figures. At the same time, police raided the home of another prominent Awan, Attorney General Mansoor Usman Awan, despite his position.
I do not remember Mukhtar Awan’s political debut as Punjab’s Jails Minister in the 1970s. However, he earned lasting fame for declaring that the government would spread a network of jails across the province (“Jailon ka jal bhichha daingaey”).
I do remember him leading the PPP campaign during the Mian Channu by-election in the winter of 1986–87. I covered the campaign on the ground rather than from a distance.
Malik Mukhtar earned a reputation as a by-election specialist after successfully managing the PPP’s Punjab by-election campaign during the 1970s. However, the PPP candidate lost.
The leader of the campaign on the other side was Ghulam Haider Wyne, later Punjab CM and then the PML provincial General Secretary. Wyne was murdered in 1993. The PML candidate, Pir Shujaat Hasnain Qureshi has also passed away, leaving only Pir Aslam Bodla, the PPP candidate, alive at 74. Of the other protagonists, PPP chief Benazir Bhutto and PML chief Muhammad Khan Junejo have also passed on.
It was one of the formative events of my professional life, so the passing of yet another key figure took me by surprise. However, I eventually accepted that reality.
After all, no one remains alive to tell the story of the Mutiny. Even the Khilafat Movement no longer has any living witnesses. Although some people still remember the Partition, their numbers continue to decline with each passing day.
Sooner or later, even the once wet-behind-the-ears reporter will no longer remain to tell the story of the Mian Channu by-election.
I suppose that suggests what may lie ahead for Attorney-General Mansoor Usman Awan. For now, however, that thought will probably offer him little comfort as he deals with his current crisis. At present, he has to deal with the situation created after the Sarwar Road police raided his house at night, while he wasn’t there.
The police said they were chasing a criminal suspect, who they were told was holed up in a house on Sarwar Road. The police claimed there was a mix-up over the address, and they raided the Attorney General’s house.
They roughed up the servants, and they broke the flowerpots outside the house. If there was a lawn, I wouldn’t be surprised if they walked on the grass. In normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have left for free, However, after they found out what they had done, they scrambled to save themselves. They all secured pre-arrest bail, but authorities suspended the police officers after the FIR nominated them.
Authorities also suspended the SP Cantt afterwards. I do not think they suspended the concerned DSP, which makes me believe the SP helped come up with the excuse for the raid. But what was the need for such a raid? Who has the Attorney General offended?
Another person who landed in trouble, though not over flowerpots, was former Pakistan captain Shan Masood. He scored a century against the West Indies, but Pakistan still lost in Trinidad.
The last time Masood scored a century, Pakistan made more than 500 runs. Despite that total, England defeated Pakistan by an innings.
Babar Azam may have recalled why he lost the captaincy the last time. The team’s continued defeats cost him the role.
