Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said during the hearing of a suo motu case on violence and targeted killings in Karachi at the Supreme Court Karachi Registry on Tuesday that according to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT)’s report on terrorist Ajmal Pahari, Pahari had confessed to getting training from India and that six more terrorists were with him.
The chief asked Sindh Police IG Wajid Durrani what legal action had been taken on Pahari’s statement and what measures had been taken after this report, since it contained information about the organisation Pahari was affiliated with.
PAHARI: According to the JIT report, Pahari had confessed that he belonged to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and he had committed all the murders and other illegal acts on the directions of his party.
The chief justice, who was heading the five-member special bench hearing the case, ordered the Sindh government to appoint judges of anti-terrorism courts within two days, and asked for the intelligence agencies’ reports to be presented in court on Wednesday (today). Commenting on the JIT’s report on Pahari, the chief justice asked representatives of the Sindh government, the Sindh Police IG and the provincial advocate general (AG) if they had read the report, and if they thought the country worth saving or the government. The AG replied that the country was more important than the government. The chief justice told the AG to ensure legislation through the provincial assembly against extortion.
The chief justice then asked the Durrani about the status of the cases against Pahari, to which he replied that Pahari was behind bars and many cases of murder and attempted murder had been registered against him.
TERRORISTS’ NAMES ABSENT: Chaudhry asked Durrani if the government had released terrorists Kamran Madhoori, Suhail Commando and Abu Bashar Banagli, to which Durrani replied that the terrorists were in custody for involvement in the attack on a police van in Chakra Goth. However, when the chief justice told the IG to read out the first information report (FIR) of the incident, the three terrorists’ names turned out to be absent from the report. A clearly irked Chaudhry asked why the terrorists’ names had not been mentioned in the FIR, to which the IG replied that the three accused men were at the hospital in police custody and police would mention their names in the final charge sheet. The chief justice said that in the end if these terrorists were released because of police negligence, the IG would say to the media that police had arrested them but the court had released them. He later adjourned the hearing until Wednesday (today).
PROPER MACHINERY: During arguments before the five-member bench, Supreme Court Bar Association President Asma Jahangir said it might be possible that extortion culture had begun in Karachi before the MQM but the party had proper machinery that allowed it to extort and carry out other illegal acts with sophistication. MQM, which had approached the Supreme Court when it announced suo motu notice of the Karachi violence to become a party in the case, neither formally filed an application of intervener nor appeared in the apex court in any of the four hearings.Meanwhile, Saleem Zia, a representative of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), filed an application to become a party in the case.
Pahari has confessed to getting training from India: CJP
