The police have registered a case against PTI leaders Ali Haider Zaidi, Haleem Adil Sheikh and other party workers on charges of rioting and criminal intimidation for “hooliganism” at city courts in Karachi during Ramazan, it emerged on Monday.
The first information report (FIR), a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, was registered today on the complaint of Faisal Gul, an investigating officer at Jamshed Quarters Police Station, and invokes sections 147 (riots), 148 (rioting with deadly weapons), and 506-b (criminal intimidation) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
It was registered at the City Courts police station in Karachi.
The FIR quoted Gul as saying that when former prime minister Imran Khan’s nephew Hassan Niazi was presented before the court in Karachi in March PTI leaders and workers had resorted to “hooliganism” and created hindrances in the way of official police work.
It added that the PTI leaders misbehaved with police officials at the courts and tried to “intimidate” them.
Niazi, who is also the PTI’s focal person on legal affairs, was arrested in Islamabad on March 20 in a case related to misbehaving with police officials as he was leaving the Federal Judicial Complex after securing pre-arrest bail in three other cases related to violence that took place on Feb 28 and March 18 when Imran appeared at the complex.
The Punjab police had brought him to Karachi on transitory remand in a case lodged against him at the Jamshed Quarters police station. Niazi was later discharged by a judicial magistrate in Karachi.
A police officer, who wished not to be named, told Dawn.com that Gul was the officer probing the case against Niazi.
Meanwhile, PTI Sindh general secretary Mobin Jatoi termed the registration of the case against Zaidi, Sheikh and others an act of “fascism” and accused police of following the dictation of the PPP.
He said that PTI workers had merely protested when the PTI chairman’s nephew was handcuffed against the court’s orders, adding that the police had harassed their workers and lawyers inside the court at that time.
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