Wazirabad incident: Can Imran lodge second FIR?

Legal experts say SC can order cancellation of the first FIR

ISLAMABAD:

Ever since PTI chief Imran Khan had a brush with death in a failed assassination attempt, the ensuing controversy and deadlock have brought a document into the limelight that hitherto went unnoticed – the first information report (FIR), a bible that shapes the proceedings of a criminal case till the very end.

Right from the hospital bed after the attempt on his life, Imran has with sustained energy accused three powerful people in the country – the prime minister, interior minister and a senior military officer – for allegedly plotting against him but has simultaneously been expressing his inability to nominate them in FIR despite having his government in Punjab.

The unrelenting deadlock has persisted for days. The matter of the registration of the first FIR, which the experts said shouldn’t have been a complicated matter and lodged against whomever Imran wished, ended up before the country’s top court and ultimately got registered by the state without having the names of the three people.

For days, PTI leadership insisted that the names of the three people should be included in the case as otherwise, it would just be a piece of paper for them. However, the experts say, the same piece of paper with the desired names in it would have provided PTI with an opportunity to lambast the incumbent rulers and a two-star army official.

Refusing to back down, PTI approached a district court for the registration of a second FIR as per Imran’s wish. On Monday, PTI leadership also filed a petition before the Supreme Court’s Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta registries challenging the decision not to include the names of the three men identified by the party chief in the FIR over the murderous gun attack on him.

The plea before the district court for a new FIR and the petition before the apex court requesting to probe the refusal of registering an FIR on the Wazirabad incident has triggered the question if a second FIR or multiple FIRs of the same occurrence can be registered or not.

“Regarding one occurrence, only FIR can be registered and the rest of the stance(s) can be brought through a supplementary statement, supplementary application and cross-case,” renowned legal expert Raja Rizwan Abbasi said.

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“As far as Wazirabad’s incident is concerned, one FIR has already been registered regarding that occurrence,” the expert said, “all the aggrieved parties may bring their stances by way of their statements under section 161 Cr.PC.”

Abbasi explained that FIR is just an instrument to put the law into motion; it is not a detailed document, and the purpose of FIR is to set the machinery into action pertaining to a criminal investigation.

Prior to 2018, Abbasi recalled, there was a concept of multiple FIRs in Murtaza Bhutto’s case, three FIRs were registered and there were many other instances, wherein, multiple FIRs were ordered to be registered, but in 2018, a full bench of the Supreme Court resolved the anomaly and now one occurrence leads to only one FIR.

President Islamabad High Court Bar Association (IHCBA) Shoaib Shaheen admitted that there was a legal bar on the registration of the FIR but opined that the Supreme Court can order cancellation of the first FIR or direct the authorities concerned to make Imran’s application as part of the FIR because of the police’s “mala fide” in the matter.

Conceding that there was no such precedent of what he said after the Murtaza Bhutto and Sughran Bibi cases, the IHCBA president said that the Wazirabad case was not only different but unprecedented as the complainant in the case was sitting with an application in hand but the police decided otherwise. “It has never happened that the complainant is sitting in the police station yet the police register an FIR through the state,” Shaheen said.

Shaheen also said that cancellation of the FIR or incorporation of Imran’s version in it was possible because the first FIR was registered only after the top court intervened in the matter.

Despite the legal bar on the registration of the second FIR, he said that Supreme Court is the final authority and only it can order changes in such a high-profile case.

Commenting on the recent developments, Abbasi incorporated that PTI’s purpose can be resolved by producing some tangible evidence. “Perhaps,” he conjectured, “they do not have any evidence and they just want to create one public document which may be used to malign some institution or some authorities particularly Pakistan Army by using the slogan that FIR has been registered against one sitting [major] general.”

Additionally, Abbasi said that the FIR can also be used internationally against the army and ISI, saying if PTI was interested to secure the ends of justice, it would not have insisted on the registration of FIR in their way. “Law of the land does not support their stance in any manner whatsoever because no second FIR can be registered on the same subject,” he concluded