MQM leader Pasha released on bail

Gets bail in two cases pertaining to Altaf Hussain’s incendiary speech last year

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Shahid Pasha was released from the Karachi Central Jail on Saturday after an anti-terrorism court (ATC) granted him bail in two cases pertaining to an incendiary speech delivered by his party founder Altaf Hussain in August last year.

The deputy convener of MQM-P and other party leaders were booked at Artillery Maidan police station for allegedly facilitating the arrangement of Hussain's controversial speech on August 22, 2016 and praising its contents.

Besides Pasha, MNA Kanwar Naveed Jameel and Qamar Mansoor were presented before the ATC’s administrative judge who remanded them in prison.



The ATC is trying MQM leaders and workers for resorting to violence after the speech in which the MQM founder had asked his supporters to attack media houses in a fury over not getting the desired coverage by the media due to a ban imposed by the Lahore High Court.

The ATC, on a previous hearing, had allowed Pasha bail in two cases against a surety of Rs100,000 in each of them. After the surety was submitted to the court, the judge issued the release order for him.

The MQM-P leaders welcomed Pasha at the gates of the prison and escorted him to their temporary headquarters in Bahadurabad where he was seated at a press conference with his colleague, MNA Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui.



Talking to newsmen, he complained about maltreatment at the hands of the jail staff allegedly on the behest of the Pakistan Peoples Party-led Sindh government. He said that problems for MQM-affiliated prisoners inside the jail had increased for the last 15 days.

He said that political prisoners inside the jail were being treated as habitual criminals and were not even allowed proper B-class facility that the court had permitted them according to their status as respectable citizens of the country.

He announced support for Farooq Sattar and agreed to his post-August 22 stance about the MQM. He asked his supporters to not get involved in any conspiracy regarding the party.