MQM-H case: Jail stopped from shifting Afaq to another facility

Judges seek record in another petition.

KARACHI:

An anticipated move to shift Afaq Ahmed, chief of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H), to another prison was blocked by the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday.

A bench, comprising justices Maqbool Baqar and Ghulam Sarwar Korai, restrained the prison from shifting him from Central Prison, Karachi, to another prison in Sindh.

Earlier, the bench heard Muhammad Farooq Advocate, the lawyer for petitioner Amjad Shafqat, who is Afaq’s brother.

The lawyer said that the Sindh government, at the behest of its coalition partners, was preparing to shift Afaq from Karachi to a prison located far away.

The government wants to delay the appeal and other petitions filed by Afaq for his release, he added. In his initial arguments, the lawyer said that once a court takes notice of a case against an accused, who is convicted and waiting for a decision on an appeal, he has to remain in judicial custody.

And if a person is in judicial custody, the provincial government has no powers to shift him from one prison to another, he argued.

Any order by the Sindh home secretary or any other authorities would be illegal and therefore the respondents must be restrained from issuing any such shifting orders, he said.

The bench ordered its office to put the Sindh home secretary, the prisons IG, and the jail superintendant on notice for June 7.

Petition on cases registered during imprisonment

An additional attorney general appeared for the state and the respondent police and sought time in an another petition filed by Afaq Ahmed seeking details of all the cases registered and pending against him during the period he was in jail.

The bench allowed the request and adjourned the hearing till June 22. The bench also ordered the SHOs of the relevant police stations to file records of the cases, and the FIRs with their affidavits.

In another petition claiming that Afaq Ahmed instigated his workers to kill a man in the jurisdiction of Nabi Buksh police station, an SHC bench issued notices to the investigating officer and the complainant of the case for June 14.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2011.