The federal government approached a Karachi court on Friday against the Sindh police’s earlier recommendation of declaring the first information report (FIR) in the charge sheet against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Captain (r) Safdar Awan as “fake”.
This move from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) comes after the FIR that had been registered against Safdar for violating the sanctity of the Quaid’s mausoleum had been declared fake by the Karachi police on Monday.
An investigation by the police revealed that the complainant, Waqas Khan, the nephew of PTI leader Haleem Adil Sheikh, was not in the vicinity of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum at the time of the supposed incident.
According to the FIR lodged by Waqas Khan, Safdar Awan, his wife and cohorts violated the sanctity of the mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah by creating a ruckus inside and chanting fiery slogans.
Earlier, district public prosecutor Zainab Hamirani and deputy public prosecutor Arif Sitai, in the scrutiny note, had said that there was insufficient evidence for the establishment of offences.
The military on Tuesday had said that the officials of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Sindh Rangers involved in the noisy arrest and subsequent release of Safdar Awan had been suspended for acting “overzealously”.
A petition against the bail of the PML-N leader in the case pertaining to slogan-mongering inside the mausoleum was filed on Wednesday at a district and sessions court in the metropolis. The petition has been fixed for hearing on November 18.
The PML-N leader had arrived in Karachi a day before his arrest as part of the party’s caravan to participate in the second public gathering of the Pakistan Democratic Movement, the 11-party anti-government alliance of major opposition parties, including the Pakistan People’s Party.
At the time, the complainant had said that he had tried to stop him from doing so but Safdar “got out of control” and started threatening him and his fellows that he would kill them. He added that Safdar later damaged government property before leaving the site with his followers.
Subsequently, PML-N had claimed the personnel of Sindh Rangers “kidnapped” Sindh police chief Mushtaq Ahmed Mahar to “force” police into arresting Safdar. A short while after, an audio clip — purportedly of Muhammad Zubair, spokesperson of PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz — surfaced on the internet, “confirming” the claim.
