The police had sought a 15-day custody of the suspects accused in the case. PHOTO: AGHA MEHROZ
RAWALPINDI:
An anti-terrorism court on Monday remanded four men in police custody for eight days for questioning in connection with the murder of Shoaib Iqbal Raja, nephew of former Punjab law minister Muhammad Basharat Raja.
Anti-Terrorism Court-I (ATC-I) Special Judge Asif Majeed Awan remanded Asad Mahmood, the PML-N candidate for Union Council-86 Dhamial, his father Jan Nisar, along with Adil Rehman, and Umer Abbasi in the custody of Saddar Bairuni police. The police had sought a 15-day custody of the suspects.
Appearing on behalf of the complainant in the case, Advocate Ilyas Siddiqi said that the police required their custody for questioning about the whereabouts of the key suspect, Ikhlaq Mahmood, who was still at large.
Advocate Siddiqi said Ikhlaq was nominated in the case for firing gunshot at Shoaib Raja.
Advocate Qausain Faisal Mufti represented the suspect Adil Rehman, and asked the court to discharge his client from the case as he had nothing to do with the murder. He added that Rehman was not nominated in the FIR.
Advocate Shahid Abbasi appeared on behalf of Umer Abbasi and said that his client was not present at the scene of the crime on December 5.
Countering the arguments of the defence lawyers, Advocate Siddiqi said that both Adil and Umer were arrested with Asad Mahmood in Karachi. He said that the two facilitated Asad in escaping from Rawalpindi.
Raja Shoaib was shot dead outside a polling station in Hayal village in UC-86 on during polling.
Talking to media persons outside the court, Muhammad Nasir Raja, former adviser to the prime minister, and Hamid Nawaz Raja, former Rawalpindi tehsil nazim, said that the police had not been behaving in a neutral manner.
They said that the Saddar Berooni police had started harassing the residents of Dhamial village. They said police had registered a case against unknown persons for torching the office and vehicle of Asad Mahmood, one of the nominated persons in the case.
Meanwhile, former Punjab Law Minister Basharat Raja filed a writ petition in the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench against the police for harassing his voters and supporters.
In the petition, filed through advocate Sardar Abdul Raziq, he claimed that the police have illegally been arresting and harassing residents of Dhamial.
The high court will take up the petition today.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2015.
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