Gandhara Relics: Bail for brother of container owners

KARACHI: A suspect arrested in the Gandhara antiquities smuggling case was granted bail by a judicial magistrate on Saturday. Tahir Qayyum Butt, brother of the truck owners, was granted bail by Judicial Magistrate (East) Haleem Ahmed. He was later released from the Landhi jail. A truck laden with more than 300 artefacts being smuggled to Sialkot was seized by the police earlier this month. The owners, brothers Asif and Atif, were nominated as the prime suspects in the case. Their elder brother was picked up from his residence by the Awami Colony police. Atif Butt told The Express Tribune that he has provided information to the police about the owner of the warehouse from where the truck picked up the artefacts. “We were only carriers. We did not even know what was in the boxes,” he claimed.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2012.