An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on Thursday observed that DSP Altaf Hussain, an investigating officer (IO) in terror facilitation case against former minister Dr Asim Hussain, was not found biased during investigations of the case.
While disposing of an application filed by Rangers against the IO, the court observed that it was not proved that some evidences were misappropriated by DSP Altaf for favouring Dr Asim, the main suspect in the case.
Earlier, Rangers, complainant in the case, had alleged the IO of being biased, tempering with and misappropriating some ‘documentary evidences’ to favour the accused. The Rangers had submitted that the IO exhibited a biased attitude in the investigations and excluded some evidences from the case to benefit the main accused.
Dr Asim is accused of providing treatment to militants belonging to MQM and Lyari gang war at Ziauddin Hospital. A number of politicians belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and newly-formed Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) as well as a leader of a socio-political group PASBAN were nominated as co accused in the said case.
Earlier, the Rangers lawyers submitted a set of documents before the ATC-II judge, saying that these were the bills for the treatment of ‘terrorists’ who were treated at Dr Asim’s hospital. The complainant had maintained that DSP Altaf had deliberately omitted some documents to weaken the case to benefit the accused.
The IO, in his defense, refuted the allegations, saying that all the documents accumulated during investigations were available in the prosecution data. Over the tasking of the case to him, he added that the previous IO was removed for being incompetent.
Meanwhile, pre-arrest bails of MQM’s Rauf Siddiqui, Waseem Akhtar, PPP’s Qadir Patel and PSP’s Anis Qaimkhani were extended till 16th May.