An Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) on Tuesday granted an interim bail to Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) leader and nominated mayor of Karachi Waseem Akhter in Dr Asim’s terrorists treatment case.
Waseem Akhter is accused of asking Dr Asim to provide medical facilities to the militants in Ziauddin Hospital who got injured in clashes with law enforcers or party rivals.
Akhter, through his counsel Khawaja Naveed, approached the ATC to avoid the arrest by obtaining the bail. The judge asked him to submit Rs 1 million as surety amount on which Akhter replied that he would not pay such a big amount. The judge said that he should go to jail then. However, the Akhter’s counsel intervened and stated that his client was also facing other cases and had to secure bail in them too. Finally, the MQM leader was awarded an interim bail against a surety bonds of Rs 0.5 million. His party fellow, former minister Rauf Siddiqui, is also on bail in the same case.
Meanwhile, Investigation Officer DSP Altaf Hussain informed the court that other absconder Anees Kaimkhani was untraceable as he had left the country on 8th November 2013 while no record regarding another leader of the party, Saleem Shahzad, could be found. “Qadir Patel of the PPP went abroad on 15th March 2015 and we are in touch with the FIA in this regard,” the IO’s report stated. While accepting the IO’s report, the court re-issued non-bailable warrants (NBWs) for MQM’s Shehzad and Qaimkhani and PPP’s Qadir Patel and directed the IO to produce them on 30th of January.