On the first day of the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) annual examination on Wednesday, students in the Chitral town came out of the halls terrorised. The students, requesting anonymity, accused Deputy Commissioner Chitral Mohammad Shoaib Jadoon of harassing them with the help of armed personnel of the Border Security Police during a random inspection of the examination halls.
Talking to this correspondent over the phone from Chitral, the students said that the DC raided the examination halls along with gun-totting personnel of the border police, creating panic among the students as well as their teachers. According to the students and their teachers, the DC raided the halls of the Government Centennial Model High School Chitral and two other schools in the town taking along the armed border police men.
They also claimed that the deputy commissioner, a CSS officer of the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) previously known as the District Management Group (DMG), behaved with the students in such a way as the children were criminals. The teachers stated that some students even could not attempt their papers while some left the halls in the middle after the DC ordered his bodyguards to conduct body search of all the candidates.
"I cannot understand what the DC wanted to get through the body search of the students with the help of his bodyguards who are not even allowed inside the examination halls," complained a perturbed teacher. The parents and teachers concerned along with the students criticised the deputy commissioner for turning the examination halls into a fish market by conducting unauthorised and unnecessary raids. Another parent said his son was really tensed when he came out of the examination as he could not attempt the whole paper due to the raid.
The teachers, parents and the students have appealed to chief minister Kyber Pakhtunkhwa Pervez Khattak and the provincial education minister for education Muhammad Atif Khan to take strict action against the deputy commissioner for harassing the students along with scores of police personnel and rearrange the paper. When contacted the deputy commissioner was found busy somewhere at a meeting and did not call back despite commitment to return the call for giving his version on the allegations of terrorising the students along with his bodyguards.