New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has put the foreign office in a quandary with its unusual request to felicitate the India visit of the family of the founder of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
CBI wants to honour Khan Bahadur Qurban Ali Khan at its golden jubilee function to be held on Friday. It has invited Khan’s grandchildren to accept the honour on his behalf posthumously.
CBI came into being on April 1, 1963. India’s premier investigating agency feels Khan as one of its founder since he was the first chief of the pre-partition Special Police Establishment (SPE) which was the forerunner of the CBI.
Khan migrated to Pakistan after India’s partition following end of the British colonial rule in August 1947. CBI has already renamed one of the blocks of its training institutes situated at Ghaziabad, a satellite township of Uttar Pradesh, situated in the east of Delhi.
Besides Khan, CBI will also honour a host of its former directors at the ceremony on Friday.
The SPE was set up by the colonial British government to probe corruption charges in war and supply during the World War II with Khan who worked as superintendent of the War Department as its chief administrator in 1841.
Following his migration to Pakistan post-partition, Khan worked as inspector general of North West Frontier Province and then become the governor of the state. He played a leading role in setting up of Pakistan’s spy agency ISI which came into being in 1950.
Incidentally, CBI and other Indian establishments often blame ISI for fermenting trouble inside India and running training camps for Pakistan-based terrorist organisations.
