Moazzam Khan case: Merit of transfer petition questioned

Court asks petitioner to argue on the jurisdiction.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) questioned on Thursday the maintainability of a petition seeking the transfer of the custody of Moazzam Ali Khan, who is being grilled by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for allegedly financing the murderers of Dr Imran Farooq, to Karachi.

The bench, headed by Justice Naimatullah Phulpoto, asked the lawyer of Sadia Bano to argue on the question of jurisdiction on December 8. She had challenged a new notification dated September 28 for further detention of her husband.

In June, the Frontier Corps claimed to have arrested Khan and Mohsin Ali from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Chaman. Later, a team of the Scotland Yard investigators had questioned the two men while they were in FIA custody.In her plea, Bano claimed that Khan is being illegally detained under provisions of Section 6 of the Protection of Pakistan Act, 2013, since April 12 this year. The court was informed that the petitioner's earlier plea challenging Khan's detention orders issued on June 25 was already pending in the court, during which he was neither produced before any anti-terrorism court nor was any permission sought to legally move him from Karachi to Islamabad.

She stated that her husband's continuous detention is a violation of the legal and constitutional provisions that guarantee freedom to citizens. She pleaded to the court to declare the second notification regarding Khan's continuous detention illegal and order the interior ministry and FIA authorities to shift him to Karachi. Bano's lawyer will argue on this point on December 8.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2015.