IHC rejects FIR filed on Sheikh Rasheed in Lasbela, Karachi.
ISLAMABAD: On Monday, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) halted the first information reports (FIRs) filed in Mochko and Lasbela against Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, the leader of the Awami Muslim League (AML) and a former interior minister. Rashid petitioned Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri to halt his transportation to Karachi and to declare the police in contempt of court.
The attorney for the AML chief contended that even though the court had stopped further action on the Aabpara police station’s summons, the police had nonetheless opened a case and made an arrest based on the same application.
Another FIR against Sheikh Rashid, according to the attorney, was filed in Mochko, Karachi. When the statement was provided at the Polyclinic Hospital in Islamabad, the court enquired as to how the case had been registered in the port city. The police were not allowed to pursue the cases filed against Sheikh Rashid in Mochko, Karachi, and Lasbela, Balochistan, by the court.
Additionally, the IHC sent letters to the attorney general, advocate general, and bar councils suspending the FIRs filed in Mochko and Lasbela against the former minister. The judge expressed its confusion during the hearing as to how the same incidence could result in FIRs being filed in various cities. A third FIR, according to the attorney, was also filed in Murree.
The attorney said that Sheikh Rashid was detained in one of the three instances when asked if an arrest had been made in any of the three cases. According to the law, when an arrest is made in one case, it is also made in the others, Justice Jahangiri said.
In addition, the attorney informed the court that Rashid had spent six hours in physical detention while being bound to a chair at an undisclosed location. Rashid was allegedly subjected to physical assault and political questioning during this time, according to the AML chief’s legal representative.
The judge reminded the attorney that “you had filed terrorism cases against the information secretary and the PTV MD and now the same thing is happening against you” and questioned where “this series will finish.”
Imagine what would have happened if the female information secretary had been taken into custody by the police, he continued. Sheikh Rashid was the subject of a prosecution last week in Karachi for making “immoral” statements about Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
Sources claim that a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) employee filed the case at the Mochko police station in response to the former minister’s remarks on the party chairman. The AML chief would be taken into prison on Saturday, according to the sources, who also stated that he would be transferred to Karachi. A police squad had been assembled, they claimed.
Earlier, the Islamabad police detained Sheikh Rashid during a late-night search on his private housing society home. For publicly accusing PPP Co-Chairman and Former President Asif Ali Zardari of masterminding a plot to kill Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, the former minister was detained.
Sheikh Rashid was given a two-day police hold order by an Islamabad court, and the police then asked the court to extend the AML chief’s physical remand. The senior politician was instead sent on a 10-day judicial remand to Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail after the court rejected the police motion.
