SHC sets aside federal ombudsman’s order in woman’s harassment case against senior govt officer

HYDERABAD: A division bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) Hyderabad circuit allowed a constitutional petition by setting aside the order of the Federal Ombudsman Secretariat for Protection Against Harassment of Women in a case of harassment against a regional level officer of the National Savings Pakistan. Comprising Justice Arbab Ali Hakro and Justice Riazat Ali Sahar, the bench passed the order on a petition filed by the incharge of the Regional Directorate of National Savings Hyderabad, Syed Farhan Ahmed Shah. He was represented by Jawad Qureshi advocate. The petitioner had challenged the Jan 18, 2024 order of the ombudsman secretariat that demoted him to a lower position and slapped a fine of Rs100,000 on him in the harassment case of a woman, Kiran Mehmood. The SHC had served a notice, which was also published in the print media, but no one appeared before the bench to represent her in the officer’s petition. She had initiated a series of complaints against the petitioner at various forums and finally filed a case before the ombudsman secretariat where according to the petitioner he was not afforded opportunity for final arguments. The federal ombudsperson proceeded to impose a major penalty of demotion to a lower post along with a fine of Rs100,000. The Regional Directorate of the National Savings Pakistan, one of the respondents in the petition, said that no complaint other than that of the respondent was ever reported against the petitioner. Barrister Jawad argued that the impugned order was coram non judice as the ombudsman secretariat lacked jurisdiction to entertain a complaint by a person who was neither an employee nor associated with the workplace in any statutory capacity. He said that the ombudsperson failed to constitute an inquiry committee as mandated under Section 3(2) of Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010. The barrister said the evidence relied upon was unverified, fabricated and insufficient to meet even threshold of preponderance of probability and contended that the ombudsperson acted with manifest bias, ignored material contradictions and imposed a major penalty without cogent reasoning. The judgement authored by Justice Hakro declared impugned order to be without lawful authority and of no legal effect, thus resultant penalty could not be sustained. He wrote that the ombudsperson acted beyond the jurisdiction, failed to apply statutory framework correctly and rendered a decision unsupported by admissible evidence. The judge said the Act 2010 was a remedial statute but it was not carte blanche. Its protections operate within the defined parameters and its procedures must be adhered to with fidelity. He noted that the impugned order also traversed matters wholly extraneous to complaint, including complainant’s dual professions, her enrolment with the bar council and her employment with Sindh Police. “These issues were not germane to determination of harassment and their inclusion reflects a misapplication of the law. The Ombudsperson’s observations on retaliation are similarly unsustainable,” read the order. Justice Hakro said the ombudsperson proceeded to draw an adverse inference against the petitioner for not producing ‘deleted messages’. This reasoning was legally untenable as burden of proving harassment rests upon the complainant. “Ombudsperson’s approach therefore departs from the statutory standard of preponderance of probability and veers into presumption without proof”, said the judgement. Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2026