‘Missing’ wife case: Court issues notice to Dost Khosa

Application filed for restoration of plea after judge dismisses original petition.

LAHORE:

Additional District and Sessions Judge Malik Mubeen Ahmad on Saturday issued notice to Dost Muhammad Khosa, a serving minister and former chief minister, for July 20 on an application seeking the restoration of a habeas corpus petition for his wife and daughter.

Earlier in the day, the same judge had disposed of the habeas corpus petition because the petitioner’s counsel had not turned up.

But the petitioner, Advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique, then filed an application for the restoration of the case, arguing that the court had erred in facts and on a point of law in its action.

Siddique said that his associate Advocate Mohammad Irfan Mukhtar had been present in the court in the morning and his attendance had been noted by the court reader.

He said the reader had told his associate to wait 15 minutes for the case to begin.

But when the associate returned to the court after 15 minutes, the petition had already been dismissed for non-prosecution. He said the reader admitted marking Mukhtar’s attendance on the case list.

Siddique argued that the court had also erred in law by disposing of the petition, because it had served notices to the capital city police officer (CCPO) and the Race Course station house officer (SHO) for their response to the plea, but the former had yet to file his report.

The report filed by the SHO, he said, was vague and did not explain anything.

The court had not even issued notice to Dost Khosa, the provincial minister for commerce and industries, but a lawyer appeared on his behalf and the court dismissed the petition without hearing the petitioner’s arguments, he said. “The dismissal of the petition is based on ignorance and mala fides and needs to be recalled in the interest of justice and fair play,” he said.

In the original petition, Siddique had asked the judge to order the police to bring actor Zeba Khan alias Sapna Khan, Khosa’s third wife, and their baby daughter to court to prove that they were safe.

According to the petition, which cited a news report from July 7, Zeba Khan was last seen on June 22 being roughed up by friends of Khosa and bundled into a car at the minister’s official residence in GOR. It said that she had been badly beaten up and her baby daughter had been taken away from her.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2011.