EDITORIAL: Unexpectedly, the Capital’s twin-brother Rawalpindi’s long-neglected Liaqat Bagh has received the much-needed attention of the local commissioner, Noorul Amin. He made a visit to the park on Monday, witnessed its poor state of maintenance and ordered renovation within the shortest possible time.

He was of the view that the look of its stage/platform is modernized, the boundary wall is repainted and the adjoining mosque is connected. The commissioner also ordered the authorities to further enlarge the board of the Benazir martyrdom site so as to make it more visible. All of it is quite possible.

But given its history, written as it is in blood, the Liaqat Bagh hasn’t received attention and care it deserves. This few-acres stretch of park on the Murree Road in Rawalpindi is laid on ground that originally belonged to the Sikh sardars before the East India Company took it over and named it the Company Bagh, as was the case in many other cities of Punjab.

But it is not its pre-Independence history for which it is known; it is known now for the bloody imprints on its soil. It has earned the rare shame of being the place where an incumbent prime minister (Liaqat Ali Khan) and a former prime minister (Benazir Bhutto) of Pakistan were assassinated and India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was dying as his peace messenger was singing the hymn of peace in Kashmir on the stage of the Liaqat Bagh in 1964. It was here that on March 23, 1973 the Federal Security Forces attacked a public rally of Awami National Party led by Khan Abdul Wali Khan.

Wali Khan narrowly escaped the murderous attempt. And, not too long after that shots were fired at a rally addressed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who then rejected his aide’s urging to hide behind the stage. On March 4, 2016 about a hundred thousand people turned up at the Liaqat Bagh to attend the funeral prayers of Mumtaz Qadri, who was executed for murder of the then governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer.

If Liaqat Bagh hasn’t received the befitting mention in history as the Jullianwala Bagh did, so is the untold story of whole truth about the assassinations of Liaqat Ali Khan and Benazir Bhutto. But the Nature has its own ways — all this blood has failed to change the luster of lush green expanse of Liaqat Bagh.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022