Former Supreme Court Judge Faqir Muhammad Khokhar, recently appointed as the chairman of the inquiry panel on enforced disappearances, passed away on Wednesday after a prolonged illness.
It was announced last week that Justice Khokhar had been appointed as the new chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearance (CIED), replacing Javed Iqbal, who had led the panel since September 2011.
His son, Tahir Mehmood, confirmed to Dawn.com that Justice Khokhar died today after battling a long illness. The former judge had been receiving treatment for cancer at Lahore’s Services Hospital for the past 12 days.
According to an obituary issued by the Lahore High Court (LHC), Justice Khokhar’s funeral will take place at 4:15 pm today after Asr prayers at a mosque in Phase 8 of the city’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA).
Justice Khokhar was one of four judges who, out of 19 Supreme Court judges at the time, took an oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) following the state of emergency declared by former dictator Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf in 2007.
In 2008, Justice Khokhar served as the acting Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan, as per a press release from the Election Commission of Pakistan. In August 2009, then-President Asif Ali Zardari accepted his resignation after he and Justice M. Javaid Buttar faced the possibility of being questioned by the Supreme Judicial Council for taking the oath under the PCO.
