MQM’s Waseem Akhtar seeks bail in hate speech case

Senior MQM leader had been booked in cases for listening to an anti-state speech of party chief Altaf Hussain

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) mayor-nominee Waseem Akhtar filed a petition in the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday for an urgent hearing on his application for bail in Altaf Hussain’s hate speech case.

Akhtar and other MQM leaders have been booked in cases by Sohrab Goth and Site police for listening to a speech of MQM supremo Altaf Hussain criticising military establishment and other institutions.



In November last year, the SHC had issued notices to the federal and provincial law officers on Akhtar’s petition, seeking the court’s directive to quash the cases under sedition and terrorism charges against him for supporting his party leader’s speech against the Pakistan Army.

The cases against Akhtar were registered after complaints had been filed by two citizens who accused the MQM leader, who also served as an adviser to the Sindh chief minister for home department during the era of General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, of inciting public to violence and harming the national interests of the country in his remarks made on television channels.



The clauses of the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Telegraph Act were placed by the police. Hundreds of cases of treason and criticism of the country’s intelligence agencies had been registered against MQM chief last year after he openly issued defamatory statements against law enforcement agencies and the Pakistan Army in his July 12 address last year.