Following the global phenomenon of people hurling shoes at personalities they do not like, the occurrence came to Pakistn on Friday when former army chief and president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf escaped a shoe-hurling episode at the Sindh High Court.
The incident occurred when Musharraf arrived at the SHC to get his bail extended in three separate cases.
The court allowed a two-week extension in his bail.
However, the court restrained the former military ruler from leaving Pakistan without permission. Angry lawyers protested and chanted slogans against Musharraf when he appeared in court, and one of them threw a shoe at him as he walked to a court room for appearance.
A group of around 20 lawyers had gathered to protest against the former military ruler at the Sindh High Court building, shouting “he’s a dictator and he should be hanged” before one of them hurled the shoe, according to witnesses.
The shoe did not hit Musharraf, TV footage showed. Witnesses said the perpetrator was taken away by plainclothesmen.
Musharraf, who has returned to the country after a four-year of self-imposed exile to contest general elections, has been implicated in three high-profile cases and faces arrest.
A single-bench of the SHC of Chief Justice Mushir Alam extended Musharraf’s transitory bail for 15 days in the case of ‘illegal confinement’ of 62 judges after he declared a state of emergency in the country on November 3, 2007.
Separately, a divisional bench of the court headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah granted bail extension for 21 days to Musharraf in the other two cases in which he was facing non-bail-able arrest warrants.
The cases involve the murder of former governor and chief minister of Balochistan Nawab Akbar Bugti in August 2007 and the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in a gun-and-bomb attack in Rawalpindi in December 2007.