Hearing of cases against Saleem Shehzad put off as IO fails to bring witnesses

The additional district and sessions judge for District East put off the hearing of cases against former Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Saleem Shahzad as the investigation officer was unable to produce prosecution witnesses at Monday's hearing.

The court expressed its displeasure over the IO’s failure and directed him to ensure the production of prosecution witnesses at the next hearing. Ex-MQM leader Shehzad is facing four cases, three of which were lodged at the Landhi police station, whereas one was registered with the Malir police in 1992.

Interestingly, three witnesses have already failed to identify Shehzad as an accused in the cases. The witnesses, who later turned hostile, had told the court that they had never seen Shehzad out of the court. They also denied that Shehzad was the man accused of ransacking a building and creating a law and order situation.

Jailbreak case 

The judicial magistrate for District East on Monday sent to the anti-terrorism court concerned the case file and other relevant case documents against the 12 people including policemen who were arrested for facilitating last month’s jailbreak by two Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists. 

Earlier, the investigation officer (IO) had requested the court to transfer the case documents to the ATC that has been tasked with hearing the case against all the accused.

At first, the 12 accused, including the then superintendent of the central prison Ghulam Murtaza Shaikh and the then deputy superintendent Faheem Anwar, and had been sent by the same court to the central prison on a judicial remand after a request was submitted by the case IO. 

However, later on, the matter was taken up by the Sindh Police’s Counter-Terrorism Department and provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, were inserted. The case was put up before the administrative judge of the anti-terrorism courts who had granted the physical remand of some of the accused and also referred the case to an ATC. 

At present, 15 accused are being tried in the case. Some of the accused including Gulam Murtaza Shaikh, Faheem Anwar Memon and Abdur Rehman Shaikh, are out on interim bail. The 15 accused are alleged to have assisted two LeJ terrorists, Shaikh Muhammad Mumtaz aka Firoun alias Sher Khan aka Shehzad alias Bhai and Ahmed Khan alias Munna, in escaping from prison on June 13.

An investigation had revealed that Ghulam Murtaza Shaikh, Faheem Anwar Memon, Abdur Rehman Shaikh, Ayaz Salik, Muhammad Amjad, Firosh Muhammad, Naveed Ahmed, Nawab Ali, Atta Muhammad, Muhammad Amir, Abdul Ghafoor, Saeed Ahmed and Nadir Ali were involved in helping the two outlaws escape.