SC orders reinstatement of 36 teachers, citing court’s use of ‘mind-blowing’ AI

The Supreme Court has ordered the immediate reinstatement of 36 secondary school teachers in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, while expressing concern that the Provincial Military Court may have relied on “mind-blowing” AI to produce fake legal citations.

The ruling, delivered by a bench comprising Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi, Justice Muhammad Shafi Siddiqui and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb, set aside a consolidated judgment dated July 14, 2025 of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Military Tribunal (KP-ST), which had upheld the dismissal of the teachers.

The Directorate of Primary and Secondary Education (DESE) KP had repeatedly sought to terminate the services of the 36 petitioners, most of whom were appointed or regularized around 2012 and 2013, claiming that their initial appointment orders were false.

Procedural defects and lack of evidence

The Supreme Court (SC) determined that DESE violated essential requirements of due process. The teachers were reinstated during the early stages of this lengthy dispute, thus confirming their status as civil servants. Therefore, any sanction for misconduct, such as dismissal based on alleged fraud, required strict compliance with the KP Civil Servants (Efficiency and Discipline) Rules, 2011 (KPEDR, 2011).

The court found that the investigation conducted by management was merely a “fact-finding investigation” and was insufficient to replace a formal departmental investigation mandated by the KPEDR, 2011.

Importantly, the SC emphasized that the internal investigation report – on which management based its termination – did not actually conclude that the petitioners’ appointments were illegal or that the teachers themselves had committed fraud. The report, in fact, expressed strong disapproval of the DESE’s conduct, noting that the Public Service Commission’s (KP-PSC) accusations of false recommendations were “non-specific” and showed “no failure or commission of fraud by the appellants.”

Despite this, the KP-ST confirmed the dismissal, which resulted in the termination of the teachers’ services.

A “mind-blowing” AI

The SC noted with “dismay” that the KP-ST, in reaching its conclusion that the appointments were void from the start, had relied on several legal citations that do not exist.

The judgment indicated that searches carried out by both citation and case title confirmed that the cases referenced by the Tribunal were fabricated. The SC suggested that the KP-ST could have relied on artificial intelligence, which could have “hallucinated” while generating the citations and reiterated a previously expressed caution regarding the use of AI in judicial decision-making.

The Court ordered that the applicants be reinstated in their positions. While authorizing the DESE to conduct a new investigation, it demanded that any such action be carried out in strict accordance with the KPEDR, 2011.