SHC moved to restrain Mirza from making remarks against Zardari

Karachi
Two Sindh Assembly members of the Pakistan People’s Party approached the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday, seeking an injunction to restrain former home minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza from making “derogatory remarks” about former president Asif Ali Zardari, in the media.
MPAs Tariq Masood Arain and Imdad Ali Pitafi said in their petition that Mirza passed disparaging and derogatory remarks against Zardari, who is also the co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), in his interviews on a number of private TV channels.
They feared that Mirza’s foul language, as well as his “anti-national and anti-state” attitude, was likely to incite violence or disturb the law and order.
The PPP legislators said the ex-home minister was removed from the party after he insisted his “pick and choose policy” should be adopted. They alleged that his acts aimed to cause the maximum possible loss to the reputation of the former president.
They said there was no lawful justification for using the print and electronic media against Zardari when there was “no iota of evidence against him”. They said Mirza was continuously violating Pemra laws, but no action was being taken against him or the TV channels for violating the laws.
The petitioners pleaded with the court to declare Mirza’s acts and remarks contrary to the law and to restrain him from making such remarks. They also sought an injunction restraining the TV channels from giving air time to him.

Fancy number plates
The SHC directed the DIG traffic and the transport authorities to file comments on unregistered and private vehicles with fancy number plates.
The direction came during the hearing of a petition filed by Naeem Sadiq, Shahnaz Shahid Hamid and other citizens, who alleged that unregistered and private vehicles carrying fancy number plates were plying in the city, but the traffic police and the excise department were taking no action against them.
The petitioners said a large number of unregistered private and official vehicles bearing illegal number plates, including applied for registration (AFR), fancy and fake green and foreign plates, were roaming around the city due to dereliction of duty on the part of the authorities. They warned that the unregistered vehicles were prone to be used by criminals.
They said over 4,000 to 6,000 official vehicles were not registered with the excise and taxation department, and thousands of private vehicles were running on the roads without any registration number plates in violation of the traffic laws. They requested the court to direct the authorities to maintain a complete record of all vehicles in official use and order action against the unregistered vehicles and those bearing fake and fancy number plates.
They also sought the record of vehicles arranged for VIPs in the name of beneficiaries as well as of the number of vehicles in use of government officials, politicians and retired officers.
Earlier, the excise and taxation department informed the court that as many as 16,204 vehicles had been registered and they were being used by officers of the provincial government.
Filing a report before the court, an official of the department said12,207 vehicles belonging to all government departments, and 3,997 vehicles of the Sindh police were registered with the department.

Detention cases
The SHC directed the federal and provincial law officers and the paramilitary Rangers to file comments on petitions against the alleged illegal detention of citizens by personnel of law enforcement agencies.
Raeesa Begum, Ghulam Rasool Rabbani, Gul Khan, Mazhar Iqbal, Javed Ali Khan, Shabana Begum, Javed Ghufran, Nazia, Wilayat Shah and Gul Badshah Khan submitted that police and Rangers had arrested their relatives from different parts of the city and their whereabouts were unknown.
They said Mohammad Zubair, Mohammad Siddiq, Khalifa Khan, Azhar Raza, Shahid Ali Khan, Adeeluz Zaman, Shoaib Ghufran, Mohammad Islam, Yousuf Khan and Mir Badshah were picked up from Garden, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Ali Town, Nazimabad, Malir, Surjani Town and Orangi Town.
The federal law officer and the Rangers counsel sought time to file comments on the petitions.
The court directed the federal and provincial counsel to file comments within two weeks.