Court distributes challans in May 9 cases

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RAWALPINDI:

An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in the garrison city on Saturday distributed copies of charge-sheets among accused in thirteen May 9 rioting cases including former prime minister Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

The police submitted charge-sheets in the court of Judge Syed Amjad Ali Shah in cases related to attacks on the GHQ Gate No 4, the Army Museum, a sensitive agency's building in Saddar as well as acts of vandalism at a metro bus station.

Former prime minister Imran Khan and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who are among the accused in the cases, were marked present in court through judicial summons.

Copies of the charge sheets were distributed among the accused, including Sheikh Rashid, Omar Ayub, Kanwal Shauzab, Zartaj Gul, and others. Now that the process of distribution of charge-sheet copies in the cases has completed, the ATC will now formally indict the accused.

These cases were registered at Wah Saddar, Taxila, Civil Lines, Sadiqabad, and City police stations.

The ATC on Saturday also cancelled interim bails of a number of PTI leaders and a senior journalist in view of their continuous absence during hearing of cases filed against them in the wake of the party's botched protest march in November last year.

Rawalpindi ATC Judge Syed Amjad Ali Shah also ordered authorities to arrest the accused person — 16 in total—and present them in the court.

When the court resumed hearing of the case, Public Prosecutor Zaheer Shah contended that the accused PTI leaders have been taking undue benefit of the court's leniency for the last four months and have been continuously absent from the court proceedings.

The law officers also presented various orders of the Supreme Court in support of his argument with regard to interim bail. The ATC later cancelled the interim bails of the accused persons.

Among those whose bail were cancelled are Raja Basharat, Sanam Javed, Mashal Yousafzai, Seemabia Tahir, Taimoor Masood, Fahad Masood, Saad Ali Khan, Raja Nasir Mahfooz, Javed Kausar, Shehbaz Ahmed, Nadia Khattak, Umar Tanveer Butt, Babar Lodhi, Nisar Khan, and Abdul Waheed, as well as journalist Sami Ibrahim. Cases were registered against the accused in various police stations in Rawalpindi and Attock after the November 26 protest.