EDITORIAL: The case involves grave allegations of sexual harassment and blackmail in high places. The other day, National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Noor Alam Khan summoned a woman, Tayyaba Gull, and her purported tormentor the recently ousted chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), former Justice Javed Iqbal, whom she accuses of sexual offences, to appear before the committee for a hearing on Thursday.

Though the latter excused himself, saying he could come only after the Eid holidays, Gull told the PAC meeting a harrowing story of how under arrest she was and stripped naked in a NAB office and video tapped. And that the former NAB chief had said he could destroy her life within a minute. Furthermore, she told the forum not only her husband was shown those shameful videos, as many as 40 FIRs were registered against her and her husband. That could break any ordinary person.

All this purportedly happened because Gull had refused to respond to Javed Iqbal’s unwanted sexual advances while facing a corruption reference along with her husband. In fact, a 2021 ‘leaked’ video showed him making flirty conversation and also trying to hug her.

She said she got it made because he was a very powerful official and wanted to expose him. Gull also claimed before the PAC meeting, chaired by Noor Alam, a PTI deserter, that she had more ‘incriminating’ videos of him, which she gave to former prime minister Imran Khan’s principal secretary Azam Khan and owner of a private news channel, Tahir Khan, who took them from her and used the same to have NAB close the cases against the PM and others in his party.

Notably, though, at the time, the then opposition and now the ruling alliance leaders were constantly accusing the PTI government of victimising them via NAB chairman. In that case, the then PM’s men shouldn’t have needed to use those videos to get their way. Either the former NAB chairman willingly worked for the previous government or was an independent operator. The wheat needs to be separated from chaff.

In any event, the most important issue is that of sexual harassment at workplace, ironically in the present instance, inside the nation’s highest office of accountability.

Talking to journalists after the PAC meeting, Noor Alam said if Javed Iqbal does not show up at the next meeting, he would issue a warrant against him, adding that in the meanwhile the PAC had recommended his removal as the head of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances.

The more appropriate forum, however, to get to the truth is a relevant court of law. The former chief of the accountability watchdog needs to face accountability for his alleged egregious offences on the basis of sound evidence.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022