Ex-ASH finance director acquitted in 2015 possession of arms, explosives case

An antiterrorism court (ATC) on Wednesday acquitted former finance director the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Fariduddin, in a case pertaining to possession of illegal arms and explosives.

Fariduddin was accused of dumping a huge cache of arms and explosives in the Nazimabad’s Khajji Ground and a case was registered against him in 2015 after his arrest by the Sindh Rangers.

After hearing the arguments of the defence lawyer and the special public prosecutor, the court declared that the prosecution had failed to prove charges against the accused, who was subsequently declared innocent.

According to the prosecution, the Rangers had placed the accused under 90-day preventive detention on June 4, 2015, for his alleged involvement in terrorism activities. In August, 2015, the paramilitary force handed him over to police and Faridduin was, subsequently, produced before the ATC (II) that indicted him in two cases. The accused, however, had pleaded not guilty.

The man was booked in two cases registered with the Rizvia Society police station as the law enforcement agencies claimed that they had seized weapons and explosives during a raid conducted on a lead provided by Fariduddin.  

Shahid Hamid murder case

An ATC hearing the Shahid Hamid murder case against Minhaj Qazi and others put off the hearing until September 16 as no prosecution witnesses showed up for the hearing. Incarnated in the central prison, accused Qazi was in attendance.

The judge expressed displeasure over no-show of witnesses and ordered the state attorney to ensure presence of witnesses at the next hearing.

The same court has issued non-bailable arrest warrants for MQM founder Altaf Hussain, Nadeem Nusrat, Sohail Zaidi and others. The court in its order said the arrest warrants were applicable during the entire life of the absconding accused.

The suspect — Muhammad Minhaj Qazi alias Asad — along with his accomplices has been booked in a case pertaining to the July 5, 1997 killing of the then (Karachi Electric Supply Corporation) KESC MD, his driver and a guard in the Defence Housing Authority.

Nineteen years after the killing of former KESC managing director Shahid Hamid, his widow and son picked out a suspect as one of the four hitmen during an identification parade held before a judicial magistrate on May 14 last year.

An antiterrorism court had already sentenced MQM worker Saulat Ali Khan, better known as Saulat Mirza, to death in 1999 in this case and he was executed in Machh jail in Balochistan on May 12, 2015. After his arrest last year, Minhaj Qazi was produced before Judicial Magistrate (South) Anees Rehman Buriro who had conducted the identification parade.

Former bureaucrat Shahnaz Hamid, the widow, and her police officer son, Omar Shahid Hamid, were the eyewitnesses and they picked out the suspect during the parade.

While assigning the suspect’s role in the commissioning of the alleged offence, both witnesses deposed that he was one of the four hitmen who carried out the killing.

In their statements recorded under Section 164 of the criminal procedure code, the two witnesses said that on July 5, 1997 they heard gunshots shortly after the elder Hamid left his house for office. The moment they came out, they saw four men firing at the car with Kalashnikov assault rifles, they added.

The mother and son said in their statements that they had also identified Saulat Mirza, who had been executed on May 12, 2015, as one of the shooters. The eyewitnesses recalled that Hamid was working against corruption and reorganising the power utility, but some people were against his efforts.

They deposed that at that time the MQM had a dominant role in the KESC. Representatives of the union along with some MQM ministers had teamed up against the slain MD. They said MQM’s Dr Farooq Sattar, Waseem Akhtar, Nasreen Jalil and her husband had extended threats to Hamid. Dr Sattar, Akhtar and Shoaib Bukhari had also insulted him during a meeting at the Chief Minister House, they added.

Omar Shahid’s mother claimed that they wanted to remove her husband from the post as they considered him a risk. Then he was assassinated, she added. During the identification parade, suspect Qazi informed the magistrate that he had been subjected to torture.

He said that he was not even allowed to change his clothes since his detention in February. He also contested the identification parade and said that his photographs were being showed on private TV channels almost on a daily basis and anyone could easily identify him. However, the magistrate interrupted him and told him that he was merely recording the witnesses’ statements and he [the suspect] could raise this issue before the trial court.