KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) has granted bail to former Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Saleem Shahzad in a case related to the harbouring and treatment of suspected terrorists associated with MQM and Lyari gang at Dr Asim Hussain’s hospital.
The ATC-II judge approved the bail for Shahzad against s surety of Rs0.5 million and directed him to submit his original passport. The court restrained him from leaving the country without its permission.
The MQM leader was arrested earlier in February at the Jinnah International Airport upon his return to the country after ending his two-decade-long self-imposed exile.
Shahzad along with Karachi’s mayor-designate Waseem Akhtar, MPA Rauf Siddiqui, Abdul Qadir Patel of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and Anis Qaimkhani of Pak Sarzameen Party had been nominated as co-accused in the case.
The Rangers had registered the complaint against the key suspect Dr Asim for allegedly treating and harbouring suspected terrorists, militants and gangsters injured in clashes with law enforcers at the branches of his hospital at the behest of the above-mentioned suspects.
According to the FIR registered on the complaint of Rangers superintendent Inayatullah Durrani, Dr Hussain confessed before a joint investigation team to have provided treatment to alleged MQM terrorists and gangsters from Lyari at his hospital and harboured them after MQM leaders Waseem Akhtar, Rauf Siddiqui, Anis Qaimkhani, Saleem Shahzad and PPP’s leader Qadir Patel had allegedly asked him to do so.
The case against him and others was registered at the North Nazimabad police station under Sections 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence or giving false information to screen offender), 202 (intentional omission to give information of offence by person bound to inform), 216 (harbouring offender who has escaped from custody whose apprehension has been ordered), 216-A (penalty for harbouring robbers or dacoits), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant or banker, merchant or agent) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code, read with Sections 21-I (aid and abetment), 21-J (harbouring any person who committed an offence under this act) and 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
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