LAHORE: The departmental action has been taken against a police officer in Lahore and he has been suspended, after a video emerged showing him showering currency notes on a chief guest during a Milad gathering.
The Station House Officer of Hair police station, Sub-Inspector Ghulam Hassan, had thrown currency notes at a chief guest at a Milad gathering a few days earlier. After the video of the incident came to light, authorities suspended him.
Ghulam Hassan had previously faced suspension while posted at Bhati Gate police station over a matter involving his kissing the hands of a religious figure. Following that suspension from Bhati Gate, he had been posted as SHO Hair.
According to details, Zahid Hussain has been appointed SHO following the suspension of Ghulam Hassan.
DIG Operations Faisal Kamran has issued an order directing the new SHO to assume charge of the post immediately.
The conduct at issue falls under the Punjab Police Efficiency and Discipline Rules and the Police Order 2002, which require officers to maintain political and institutional neutrality and to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with the dignity of the service.
The specific concern with a serving SHO participating conspicuously in a religious gathering is not the religious observance itself, which is a matter of personal faith. It is that the officer commanding a police station holds coercive authority over everyone in his jurisdiction, including people of every sect and faith within it, and public displays of allegiance to a particular figure or gathering compromise the perception — and potentially the reality — of impartial policing.
That principle carries particular weight in Lahore, where police station jurisdictions frequently contain multiple sectarian congregations, and where the SHO is the officer who decides which processions receive protection, which complaints are registered, and how a dispute between communities is handled.
A single viral video is a disciplinary matter. Two, involving the same officer within a short period, is a supervision question — and it is the one this newspaper would put to the Lahore Police leadership.
Ghulam Hassan was suspended once, restored, and posted to the command of another police station, where the conduct recurred in a comparable form. That sequence suggests the first suspension functioned as a pause rather than a corrective, which is the standard criticism of the suspension-and-repost cycle in Punjab Police discipline: officers are removed from public view until attention subsides and then reappear elsewhere, often at equivalent rank.
The E&D Rules provide for a range of penalties beyond suspension, including censure, withholding of promotion, reduction in rank and removal from service. Suspension is a holding measure pending inquiry, not itself a punishment. Whether a formal inquiry was conducted after the Bhati Gate episode, and what it concluded, is a matter of public record that has not been made public.
There is also a proportionality point worth stating plainly. The officer’s conduct was foolish and breached professional norms. It did not involve corruption, violence or abuse of a citizen, and it should not attract a heavier penalty than misconduct that does. The value of publishing disciplinary outcomes is precisely that it allows the public to see whether the force punishes embarrassment more readily than it punishes harm.
-Reported by Waqas Ahmed
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