Daily Times

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Thursday issued notices to provincial home secretary, provincial chiefs of Rangers and police and the city’s commissioner to file their replies to a petition challenging detention of a Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)-London leader under the ‘Maintenance of Public Order’.

A division bench headed by Justice Naimatullah Phulpoto asked the petitioner’s counsel to place on record the copy of the detention order at the next hearing. The hearing was put off until November 9. Naz Khalid Kunwar, wife of MQM-London leader Kunwar Khalid Younus, had filed the petition seeking his release.

In the petition, she submitted that the Rangers personnel arrested her spouse along with other MQM leaders from outside Karachi Press Club on October 21, 2016 as they were going to address a press conference. Later, she said, she came to know through media that her spouse was detained along with other leaders under the MPO.

She told the court that there were no criminal charges against Kunwar Khalid. “She feared that her spouse would be implicated in fictitious criminal cases,” the court heard. The petitioner’s counsel argued that the detention order was illegal and unconstitutional. “The law enforcement agencies are bound to treat every citizen equally but they are overriding certain provisions of the constitution which guarantees protection of lives of all citizens, freedom of speech and freedom of movement,” the petitioner’s counsel contended. She pleaded the court to declare the detention of the petitioner’s spouse illegal and order his release. The court was further requested to direct jail authorities to allow relatives of the detainee to meet him.