Draft:Muhammad Abbas Khan

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Muhammad Abbas Khan
Inspector General of Police, Punjab
In office July 1993 – November 1996
Inspector General of Police, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (2nd tenure)
In office 29 January 1989 – 5 September 1990
Inspector General of Police, Sindh
In office 4 July 1988 – 1 January 1989
Inspector General of Police, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (1st tenure)
In office 3 November 1985 – 1 June 1988
Personal details
Born	c. 1939 Prang village, Charsadda District, North-West Frontier Province, British India
Died	March 31, 2021(2021-03-31) (aged 81–82) Peshawar, Pakistan
Cause of death	COVID-19
Education	Lincoln's Inn MA Public Administration, Syracuse University (1982)

Muhammad Abbas Khan (c. 1939 – 31 March 2021) was a senior Pakistani police officer of the PSP 1963 batch who served as Inspector General of Police of three provinces — Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (twice), Sindh, and Punjab — a distinction believed to be unique in Pakistan's police history.^[1]

He was a member of the Abbottabad Commission, the judicial inquiry into the circumstances of the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.^[2]

He was also a noted advocate for police reform, authoring a 1996 booklet that called for replacing the Police Act, 1861 with democratic legislation and was later described by scholars as a foundational text in Pakistan's police reform movement.^[1][3][4]

He died on 31 March 2021 in Peshawar at the age of 82 due to COVID-19.^[1][5][6]

Abbas Khan was born around 1939 in Prang village, Charsadda District, in what was then the North-West Frontier Province of British India. His family was well-known and related to prominent political and industrialist families of the province.^[1]

He obtained a law degree and then travelled to the United Kingdom to study at Lincoln's Inn, his father's alma mater, with the intention of becoming a barrister. Before completing his studies, he qualified for the CSS examination and was selected into the Police Service of Pakistan.^[1] He belonged to the 1963 batch of PSP, which produced many officers who went on to hold the highest command positions. He later obtained a Master's degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University in 1982.^[1]

Towards the end of 1971, Abbas Khan was transferred to East Pakistan where he was serving as Superintendent of Police in Dacca (now Dhaka). During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in India for approximately two years. On his return to Pakistan, he was appointed Inspector General of Prisons — an ironic posting, as he later noted.^[1]

He subsequently served as Additional Secretary, Home and Tribal Affairs Department, Government of NWFP, before being appointed Commandant of the Frontier Constabulary in Peshawar, including at one point while simultaneously holding dual charge as Inspector General of Police of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.^[1]

Abbas Khan served as IGP of NWFP from 3 November 1985 to 1 June 1988.^[7] During this tenure he undertook two significant infrastructure and institutional initiatives. He oversaw the construction of red-brick police posts along provincial highways — designed by the architect Wilayat Khan — at intervals of approximately 20 kilometres, built on retrieved state land, to deter highway robberies. He also founded the Special Branch of the NWFP police, which went on to outperform other provincial intelligence agencies.^[1]

Abbas Khan served as Inspector General of Police of Sindh from 4 July 1988 to 1 January 1989, having been personally selected for the role by the newly appointed Governor of Sindh, General Rahimuddin Khan.^[8][1] Following the general election of 1988, he was transferred to NWFP and appointed IGP for a second term.

Abbas Khan returned as IGP of NWFP from 29 January 1989 to 5 September 1990.^[7] During this second tenure he continued to hold dual charge as Commandant of the Frontier Constabulary.

While serving as Commandant of the National Police Academy, Sihala, Islamabad, for three years, Abbas Khan secured land for the construction of a new multi-purpose campus to replace the academy's existing makeshift premises.^[1]

He served as Federal Secretary for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON), Kashmir Affairs, and Northern Areas.^[1]

Abbas Khan was selected by the interim government of Prime Minister Moeen Qureshi and appointed Inspector General of Police of Punjab for more than three years from July 1993, the longest uninterrupted tenure held by any police chief of Pakistan's most populous province in three decades at the time of his death.^[1] During this period he made sustained efforts to depoliticise the Punjab Police.

A police lines in Lahore was subsequently named the Abbas Khan Police Lines in his honour — only the second such naming after a former Punjab IGP in the province's history. A police control room in Rawalpindi was also named after him.^[1]

After his retirement from the IGP Punjab role, Abbas Khan served as Federal Secretary SAFRON and supported Omar Khan Afridi, the minister of SAFRON, Interior and Narcotics Control in the caretaker government of Prime Minister Malik Meraj Khalid, when in 1997 Afridi initiated the move to grant universal adult franchise to the people of the FATA, backed by President Farooq Leghari and Prime Minister Malik Meraj Khalid.^[1]

Abbas Khan retired from service in 1999.^[1]

During his tenure as IGP Punjab, Abbas Khan authored a booklet in 1996, Problems of Law and Order and Police Reforms (Vanguard, Lahore)^[9], which set out a comprehensive case for replacing the Police Act, 1861 — colonial-era legislation that had governed policing across the subcontinent for 135 years — with a new legal framework suited to a democratic state. His proposals included making the police accountable to independent public safety commissions, granting administrative and operational autonomy to senior officers, establishing a National Police Agency, and enhancing professionalism across police sub-cadres. The booklet incorporated input from a Japanese police advisory mission invited by the Government of Pakistan in April 1996, led by the Director General of Japan's National Police Agency, whose experts had advocated replacing the prevailing "police for the government" principle with a "police for the people" philosophy.^[1][10]

The booklet was widely noted in Pakistani policing circles. Writing in the Pakistan Journal of Criminology, senior police officer Fasihuddin described Abbas Khan as a "pioneer of the movement of police reforms" in Pakistan, and noted that the booklet "became very famous" among police commission reports of that era. Fasihuddin further assessed that Abbas Khan and his colleagues influenced the Report of the Focal Group on Police Reforms in 2000, which was a direct precursor to the Police Order 2002.^[3][4]

Abbas Khan continued to engage with police reform questions long after retirement. He chaired the committee constituted by the Wafaqi Mohtasib to report on addressing maladministration in police stations; his earlier writings were also cited in the committee's published findings of 2016, produced pursuant to the Supreme Court's order in Civil Petition No. 1282/2014.^[11]

Following retirement, Abbas Khan continued to contribute to public life through a number of institutional roles:

• Member, Interior Ministry focal group on police reforms
• Member, committee on de-weaponization
• Member, National Public Safety Commission (2006)^[12]
• Member, Public Accounts Committee of the federal government
• Minister for Forests, Environment, and Transport in the caretaker government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (organised to oversee general elections)
• Chairman, search and scrutiny committee for the KP Ehtesab Commission
• Chairman, committee constituted by the Federal Ombudsman (Wafaqi Mohtasib Secretariat) in compliance with a Supreme Court order (Civil Petition No. 1282/2014, dated 4 September 2015) on addressing maladministration in police stations, contributing a paper on good administration standards drawing on over three decades of policing experience.^[13]
• Member, Abbottabad Commission (headed by Justice Javed Iqbal), the judicial inquiry into the circumstances of the US raid in Abbottabad on 2 May 2011.^[1][2]

Notably, Abbas Khan ultimately declined to sign the final Abbottabad Commission report.^[14]

Abbas Khan was a Pashtun from Charsadda and was described by contemporaries as a handsome and distinguished officer. His youngest child's birth brought him particular happiness in his later years.^[1]

He died in Peshawar in 2021 at the age of 82 from COVID-19.^[1][8] His funeral prayers were attended by political leaders, including QWP chairman Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and PPP leader Khwaja Mohammad Khan Hoti, other bureaucrats, Frontier Constabulary officials, and thousands of local residents.^[8]

Abbas Khan was buried at his ancestral village of Parrang in Charsadda.^[5] Condolence references were held at the Central Police Office, Lahore. IGP Punjab Inam Ghani stated at the reference that Abbas Khan "enhanced the prestige of the post of IG Punjab with his vision and policy" and had become "a role model for all the officers of the Police Service of Pakistan."^[15] Retired senior police officer Tariq Khosa cited Abbas Khan alongside Sadaat Ali Shah and Z.I. Rathore as among the most inspirational leaders of Pakistani policing, noting their shared willingness to refuse irregular and illegal orders from higher authorities.^[1]

• "Remembering an untainted officer", The News International, 13 May 2021
• Abbottabad Commission (Wikipedia)

Category:Pakistani police officers Category:Police Service of Pakistan officers Category:Inspectors General of Police of Punjab, Pakistan Category:Inspectors General of Police of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Category:Inspectors General of Police of Sindh Category:People from Charsadda District Category:Lincoln's Inn alumni Category:Syracuse University alumni Category:Pakistani prisoners of war Category:1939 births Category:2021 deaths Category:Deaths from COVID-19 in Pakistan