Hijacking from the Ground

Gen Musharraf's coup in 1999 was the military's fourth in Pakistan's sixty years of independence. Like his martial predecessors, Musharraf tried to purge the political leadership by instituting false cases against it. While earlier Bonapartists Ayub, Yahya and Zia ul Haq had preferred to tread the beaten path by charging politicians with murder, corruption and other such charges, Musharraf turned out to be more innovative. His junta accused the ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of "Hijacking" the flight on which Musharraf was returning to Pakistan from Sri Lanka. What made the whole thing rather farcical and absurd was that Sharif is supposed to have done this sitting in his office in Islamabad over a thousand kilometres away.

Public opinion in Pakistan was sharply divided when Nawaz's case came up for trial. His critics depicted him as a despotic 'democrat' who had tried to kill the Army Chief in mid flight. His supporters, equally vehemently asserted that Nawaz had been framed. The struggle became so intensely political that vital and critical legal issues receded into the background. Interested only in scoring points and making accusations, counsel on both sides tended to focus only on the political dimensions of the case. While there is no denying the fact that tussles between democratically elected leaders and ambitious Generals are commonplace in the Third World, there is always the fond hope that the judicial process would steer away from such pressures and concentrate on the law. Predictably, the judiciary of the Musharraf era refused to take an independent position.

This book seeks to shift the spotlight back to the law, in an effort to ascertain whether Nawaz Sharif was guilty of conspiracy to hijack a commercial flight, and that too from the ground.