Committee constituted to probe controversial news leak

ISLAMABAD – The government has constituted a high-level committee to probe into the alleged news leak, published in ‘Dawn’.

According to a notification issued by the Ministry of Interior on Monday, the committee will be headed by retired Justice Amir Raza Khan.

The members of the committee include Provincial Ombudsman Punjab Najam Saeed, Secretary Establishment Syed Tahir Shahbaz, Director FIA Punjab Dr Usman Anwar and one member each from Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),Military Intelligence (MI) and Intelligence Bureau Intelligence (IB).

Related: Army didn’t seek action against Dawn’s Cyril Almeida: Security sources

Interior Minister had said on Saturday that the probe of the planted story would not be against former Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid.

Read more: Dawn’s senior columnist Cyril Almeida put on Exit Control List for ‘misleading’ story on national security

The Prime Minister, on October 29, took back the Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage from Pervaiz Rashid.

On 6 October, Dawn newspaper had published the story in which journalist Cyril Almeida had written about an alleged civil-military rift during the National Security Committee (NSC) meeting over the issue of tackling jihadi outfits.