LAHORE: The court of a local judicial magistrate on Saturday dismissed a case of kidnapping of his own two minor daughters against businessman and Liberia’s Ambassador at Large Umar Farooq Zahoor and two others, for not being the proper forum, ruling the FIA should not have registered the case in Lahore at the first place.
The kidnapping case was registered against businessman and Liberia’s Ambassador at Large Umar Farooq Zahoor, Sadaf Naz and Muhammad Zubair by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in June 2020.
Ghulam Murtaza Virk, Judicial Magistrate Section 30 of Lahore, said in his order that the alleged kidnapping of teens – Zainab and Zuneira took place in Karachi around 14 years ago according to the prosecution. Therefore, the proper forum for the prosecution of the case should be Karachi, not Lahore.
“Therefore, this court at Lahore has got no jurisdiction to decide this case, hence, the file of this case along with all the enclosures and evidence is returned to the prosecution to file it before the proper forum,” the judge said in his order.
Zahoor has complained that his former wife Sophia Mirza conspired with former accountability minister Shahzad Akbar and FIA’s director (late) Dr Rizwan in June 2020 and registered fake cases of money laundering and kidnapping against him to set the FIA on him, unleashing a campaign of revenge. And today’s order of the learned magistrate has vindicated his stance that Akbar had put his authority to wrong use by forcing the FIA Lahore to register false cases against him despite the fact that the agency lacked the jurisdiction.
The magistrate was hearing the case related to the accusation by former model Sophia who had complained that her former husband Zahoor with help of his friends – Naz and Zubair arranged the kidnapping of the couple’s minor daughters to Dubai in September 2009 after their marriage fell apart.
The court order notes that as per Naz’s petition, there is an unexplained delay of over 10 years in registration of the FIR in the alleged offence that took place in 2009 in Karachi and the prosecution had produced nine witnesses but failed to bring on record iota of incriminating material against the accused. Naz had pleaded that she was dragged into the “fake and fictitious” case without any reason therefore the case against her should be dismissed.
It’s understood that the case will now be sent to FIA Karachi to complete the remaining investigation after judge Virk’s ruling.
Zahoor’s lawyer Rana Rehan pointed out that this matter was settled a long time ago in 2013 by the Supreme Court when Sophia accepted a payment of Rs10,00,000 from her former husband and settled the case. He pointed to the ruling made by a three-member bench of the apex court whereby the matter between Sophia and Zahoor was finally disposed of with the observations that the said amount has been paid to the model.
The lawyer further added that the initiation of criminal proceedings on a matter already settled by the Supreme Court showed the malafide of the complainant.
In June last year, it has been revealed after an investigation how Sophia posing as a concerned Pakistani citizen using the name of Khushbakht Mirza registered a complaint against Zahoor alleging fraud and money-laundering of around Rs16 billion.
Sophia had called on the FIA to take action against Zahoor “for the sake of Pakistan’s name and to prevent financial crimes against Pakistan” and the FIA under the instructions of Akbar immediately obliged. Two separate cases were registered against Zahoor by FIA’s Corporate Crime Circle under Dr Rizwan.
Sophia had falsely accused Zahoor’s involvement in gold smuggling, illegally acquiring billions of rupees in fraud from various countries, defaming Pakistan, and defrauding businesses in Pakistan.
