Prestitution is an old wine to distract people. Its traces can be observed in the emergent, yet suffocated, stances of people of Punjab University (PU). Here the majority wanted to express themselves but end up sharing the status-quo. Who knows who will be taken away next?

The fang of character assassination, also an old euphemism which rightly stings the conscious, a strategy in manoeuvring the viewpoints, was clearly visible in ill-written articles, wherein one can point out mistakes easily. For example, in the initial articles, quotes were without any references and were used for assassinating the character of Dr Ata. Names of departments were interchangeably mistook and displaced from the real localities, where one can smell the fish.

While the leadership chose to stay quiet, other voices raised the issue and the frequencies have been caught by the executive committee of the Karachi University Teachers Society (KUTS), for the first time, to express the concern over the arrest of Punjab University professor Dr Ghalib Ata and Dr Khawaja Alqama.

Only a few days passed and the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) arrested two other PU teachers named Dr Aamer Saeed and Umar Nawaz and a student Waqas for their alleged affiliation with a militant organisation.

And then the Vice Chancellor of PU, Dr Mujahid Kamran, decided to break the silence by stating, “We are also patriot just like our security agencies and cooperate with forces in every hour of need. But CTD raided university premises and arrested three of our professors without even informing us’’.

In a statement Kamran went on to say if the CTD had any solid evidences against any of the suspects they should have registered an FIR before arresting them. He further added that the proofs of professors’ involvement in some terrorism related activities must be made public and shared with university administration so that they can also take appropriate measures. However, Umar got released after the preliminary probe. The PU VC and the teachers thanked former IGP and chief minister’s adviser Rana Maqbool for taking notice of the issue.

On December 21, the Punjab University Academic Staff Association (PUASA) also expressed the same concern by stating that since this incident took place without informing administration, terrorists could also use the same way and it would be difficult for PU security staff to distinguish between sensitive agency officials and terrorists. They said that such humiliating action against university teachers on the basis of doubt was inhumane and immoral.  PUASA leaders said teachers were government employees; they live with their families and were not running anywhere. They said teachers weren’t armed and if any sensitive agency doubted any teacher, they could simply summon him to its office or any place and that any teacher was ready to comply with their instructions to join any investigation. Any ‘suspected’ teacher can voluntarily cooperate with sensitive agencies, but this is not the way to behave with teachers, they added.

Punjab University Academic Staff Association (PUASA) and relatives of the two arrested teachers have demanded the law-enforcement agencies to complete investigation process at the earliest and free both the teachers, otherwise provide them with the right to defend their case as no investigation report had been made public and the university’s image was tarnished by the media even before any inquiry report.

The wife of Dr Ghalib Ata said that her son was in trauma since the operation of law enforcement agencies officials, who raided their house and hat to date his son hasn’t been able to sleep. She demanded early release of her husband.

Dr Aamer Saeed’s father-in-law Prof (R) Saeed Iqbal, who had served in Islamia College as vice-principal, requested the media not to indulge in character assassination of their beloved, even before the inquiry report of the agencies. “We are with armed forces but we are hurt due to this style of operation when Aamer was already cooperating with an agency official, who had a meeting with him a day before”, he added.

Institute of Administrative Sciences (IAS) Assistant Professor Dr Mobeen Khalid claimed that he never felt any brainwashing of students by his colleagues and said they were very dedicated and committed towards their teaching responsibilities.

Although the complete picture is yet to be disclosed amidst reports that the CTD of Sindh Police on December 18 arrested chief executive officer of a private college as well, in suspicion of abetting and facilitating the deadly Safoora attack that killed at least 47 people belonging to minority Ismaili community in May last year. And on January 20, 2016 Dr Shazib Ehsan Sheikh, a faculty member of Suleman Dawood School of Business, was also detained by security agencies with no information about the nature of the charges or investigation.

While a wave of terror attacks has been targeting educational institutions of Pakistan since the Malala incident, we need to wait and see whether these dots will connect to Gordon Brown’s idea of universality of education or if they will be successful in finding a perfect correlation between terror and education.

Surely time will unfold itself.