Daily Times

Members of National Assembly (MNAs) Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar were released from prison in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Haripur district early on Saturday, more than two days after the two lawmakers were granted bail by the Peshawar High Court in the Kharqamar attack case.

Dawar and Wazir, who are leaders of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), were warmly received when they came out of the prison after midnight by a large number of party workers, who had been waiting outside for nearly six hours.

Abdullah Nangiyal, a PTM member, said the Haripur jail authorities had received the legal documents and release orders before 6pm on Friday but the MNAs were released at 12:30am. “The court order was sent via courier, which considerably delayed the release for almost two days,” he added.

He said both lawmakers had later travelled to Peshawar to unite with their families.

On Wednesday, the Bannu bench of the high court headed by Justice Nasir Mehfooz had conditionally accepted bail petitions of the MNAs on the condition of furnishing two surety bonds of Rs 1 million each. The court directed the two lawmakers to appear before a relevant police officer once a month and barred them from travelling out of the country.

In its detailed order, the bench stated that the conditional bail was granted only for a period of one month, and would be subject to the condition of “good behaviour” by the MNAs, and before the expiry of that period they would have to file fresh bail applications in the high court.