New Delhi: CBI has shelved its proposal to posthumously honour a Pakistani national who was the first Chief of Special Police Establishment (SPE), the forerunner of CBI, in the wake of opposition from certain quarters. The Dispatch News Desk (DND) reported.
The agency was planning to call the Lahore-based family of Khan Bahadur Qurban Ali Khan, an officer of Punjab cadre from the erstwhile Indian Police (IP), who was the first Chief of Special Police Establishment (SPE) which later became CBI in 1963.
Khan, who was also stated to be one of the founding members of Pakistan’s spy agency ISI, was among a host of former Directors of the country’s premier probe agency who were to be honoured on April 6 here on the occasion of CBI’s golden jubilee celebrations, official sources said today. ISI was formed in 1950.
CBI had even approached the External Affairs and Home Ministries for making necessary arrangements and requisite travel documents for the Khan family to visit Delhi. However, some former bureaucrats voiced reservations on Khan’s role before partition and immediately after 1947 prompting the agency to shelve the proposal, the sources said.
SPE, which was set up in 1941 by the British Government, was designated to investigate cases of bribery and corruption in transactions with the War and Supply Department of India, which was set up during the course of World War II, with Lahore in undivided India as its headquarters.
Khan, who was the Superintendent of War Department, was made the Chief Administrator of SPE. Even after the end of the War, the need for a central agency to investigate cases of bribery and corruption by Central Government employees was felt.
The Delhi Special Police Establishment Act was, therefore, brought into force in 1946 and Khan continued to head this department till partition after which he migrated to Pakistan and was appointed as Inspector General of one of the province of North West Frontier Province (NWFP, now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Khan had also become Governor of NWFP from 1954-55. He retired as Inspector General of Police in 1953.
