Dr Asim case : Rangers move court seeking to change IO

ATC had disposed of an application by paramilitary forces claiming officer was favouring the accused

KARACHI: The controversy surrounding former federal minister Dr Asim Hussain's alleged role in abetting terrorists deepened following a court appeal filed on Monday by the paramilitary forces seeking to change the investigating officer (IO) of the case.

The move came after the same ATC had disposed of, on the previous hearing, an application filed by the paramilitary force counsel alleging IO DSP Altaf Hussain was exhibiting a biased approach to benefit the accused in the case. However, the court observed that the allegations could not be proved.

Dr Asim had been detained by the Rangers on August 26, 2015. He, along with 27 others, had been accused of facilitating terrorism by providing treatment to terrorists — militants working for political and religious groups — who were injured in shootouts with the law enforcers or with rival groups.

A number of politicians belonging to Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), recently formed Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) and a leader of a socio-political group Pasban have been nominated as co-accused in the case for allegedly asking Dr Asim for favoring the suspected gangsters.

At the outset of the hearing, the Rangers attorney submitted copies of the documents which he maintained were tampered with and misplaced from the evidences that were collected by the previous IO, SI Zulfiqar, with the help of the paramilitary force in initial stages of the case. The documents comprised treatment records of the some suspected militants affiliated with political parties, including Shujaat Hashmi, who is said to be the ringleader of a target killing team, Asad Iqbal and Riaz Mazhar, as well as the names of those who referred them to the Ziauddin hospitals and paid their bills.

The ATC-II judge, accepting the submitted documents as part of the prosecution data, supplied their copies to the accused as per criminal procedure code. Over the Rangers plea for removing the IO, the judge issued notices to the parties named in it and adjourned the hearing till June 4. The interim bail of MQM's mayor-nominee Waseem Akhtar, former minister Rauf Siddiqui, PPP's Qadir Patel and PSP's Anis Kaimkhani was also extended.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2016.