Govt withdraws Kharqamar case against PTM leaders

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government on Wednesday withdrew a case against Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) leaders filed after an attack on a security checkpoint in North Waziristan tribal district last year.

A group of people on May 26, 2019 assaulted Kharqamar check post in Boya area of North Waziristan to forcibly secure the release of a terrorists’ facilitator triggering a fire exchange which resulted in multiple casualties, the military had said in a statement.

Thirteen assailants had lost their lives in the attack which also left 15 people, among them five soldiers, wounded. MNAs Ali Wazir and Mohsin Javed Dawar had led the group of assailants, according to the statement.

The authorities had later filed an FIR at the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) Police Station at Bannu Range against multiple PTM workers including Dawar and Wazir under different sections of the Pakistan Penal Code, Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance and Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Today, an anti-terrorism court (ATC) judge Justice Babar Ali Khan heard the case in Abbotabad and approved the application filed by the K-P government to withdraw the case.

The government in its application said that it did not want to pursue the case further and that it should be closed.

The Islamabad district commissioner, on September 24, 2019, had also withdrew an anti-terrorism case against 37 PTM activists, who were booked for arranging protests against the state institutions and government agencies.

The FIR had been lodged with Islamabad’s Kohsar police against PTM workers for shouting slogans against the army. According to the FIR, PTM workers held a gathering at cricket stadium in Swabi’s Shah Mansoor Town without getting permission from the authorities.

In the rally, the PTM chief Manzoor Pashteen and others had reportedly made contemptuous statements against state institutions.

On January 27, Pashteen was arrested and sent to jail by a judicial magistrate in Peshawar on basis of an FIR registered against him on January 18 in DI Khan on a slew of charges.

However, he was released a month later on February 25.