Discrepancies: SHC throws out petition challenging Lyari man’s arrest

Trial court to decide factual controversy.

KARACHI: A court has disposed of a petition challenging what a supposed Lyari gangster’s family claimed was his illegal arrest.

Shahid Bikik’s father Khair Mohammad filed a petition, saying that the police first said he was arrested on April 24 in a raid on Thatta and then on April 23 from Khamosh Colony in Karachi. The petitioner’s lawyer also said that the police had said they had seized weapons and ammunition from him but he was a law-abiding citizen. The police booked him under different sections of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Shahid Bikik’s father named CID SSP Mohammad Aslam Khan in the petition. He said that the CID police were making different claims. He requested the court to therefore look into the circumstances of the alleged arrest and declare it illegal.

SSP Aslam was represented by Muhammad Farooq. He told the court that the CID had first arrested an Imran Bikik on April 17, an accomplice of Shahid Bikik. On April 23, the police were tipped off that Shahid Bikik was in Khamosh Colony, Gulbahar and they arrested him along with two accomplices. The men led them to a stash of weapons.

According to the CID, Shahid was on the run in a double murder case of Siddique Bhamboro of the PPP Shaheed Bhutto and was wanted by the police in more than a dozen crimes.

The bench decided that a trial court would be competent to decide the controversy over the facts concerning the place of arrest and seizure of arms.

The Sindh High Court’s Justice Maqbool Baqar and Muhammad Shafi Siddiqui then disposed of the petition and told the police not to harass the family of the man in custody.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2012.