Daily Times

KARACHI: The police on Saturday submitted charge sheets against Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) founder and other leaders in three identical cases pertaining to facilitating Altaf Hussain’s anti-state speech on August 22.

The investigating officers filed charge sheets in the cases registered at Quaidabad, Gulshan-e-Hadeed and Site Super Highway police stations. As per the sheets, founder Altaf Hussan and leaders of the MQM-Pakistan faction namely Farooq Sattar, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Khawaja Izhar-ul-Hasan and Aamir Liaquat Husain, were yet to be arrested in the cases.

Altaf Hussain faced charges of delivering a speech against the state whereas the other leaders had been booked for allegedly arranging and facilitating his hateful remarks. National Assembly member Kanwar Naveed Jameel, Qamar Mansoor and Shahid Pasha were already behind bars on the same charges.

The judge accepted the charge sheets and sent the cases to the Anti Terrorism Courts for further proceedings.

Enraged party workers, who were on hunger strike outside Karachi Press Club, had raised anti-Pakistan slogans after Altaf’s speech. The workers had also attacked the office of a private news channel located in Saddar, after their leader had blasted the media especially three news channels for not giving coverage to MQM.

One person was killed and others were injured in the riots that erupted near Fawara Chowk after Altaf’s address.