Ghulam Mustafa Khar

Early life

Khar was born in Kot Addu, Muzaffargarh District, Punjab Province on 2 August 1937. His father, Mohammad Yar Khar, was a big landowner himself. Khar was educated at Aitchison College, Lahore.

Politics

In 1967 Khar joined Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as one of the founding members of the Pakistan Peoples Party as a close personal friend and political ally. He was appointed Governor and Martial Law Administrator of Punjab, the most electorally powerful province in the country by the newly sworn in President Bhutto following the collapse of Yahya Khan's military government. When the 1973 constitution was adopted in August and Bhutto became Prime Minister of Pakistan, Khar was given the portfolio of Chief Minister of Punjab Province. Thanks to complaints from within the PPP, Khar was replaced by the far more left-leaning and intellectual Hanif Ramay. Khar was briefly reappointed Governor in March 1975 before being finally dismissed in July 1975. Bhutto's suspicions over Khar's ambitions as well as the deep divisions within the PPP in the Punjab led to his refusal to allow Khar to run for Ramay's seat in Lahore. Khar's attempts to run for the seat as an independent ended in failure. Ironically by 1976 former rivals within the PPP, Khar and Ramay were working together within the Pir of Pagaro's Pakistan Muslim League (F). In April 2017, he joined Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and he is considered to be on the left-wing of the PTI.

Personal life

One of Khar's marriages was to Tehmina Durrani, a Pakistani women's rights activist and author. Her first book, My Feudal Lord, released by Vanguard Books of Lahore in June 1991 caused controversy in Pakistan's society by describing her abusive and traumatic marriage to Ghulam Mustafa Khar.

His daughter Aaminah Haq is a Pakistani model and actress noted as a Lux model and for her role in the television drama Mehndi.

Hina Rabbani Khar, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, is the daughter of his brother Ghulam Noor Rabbani.

His son, Bilal Mustafa Khar was accused by his ex-wife Fakhra Younus of pouring acid over her face. However, he was acquitted of the charges. Although four witnesses testified to seeing him enter Fakhra’s home on the day of the attack, all later retracted their statements. They had complained of receiving death threats, but the judge in the case took no notice and in December 2003 he dismissed the charges. Khar continued to protest his innocence, claiming the perpetrator was a pimp with whom his wife had been having an affair.