June 19, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 03, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 18: Former federal minister Mohammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi, facing charge of homicide, appeared in a local court seeking confirmation of his pre-arrest bail but the judge put off the hearing to June 22 at the request of the complainant.

Counsels for complainant Mustafa Qayyum, brother of Canadian national Kafila Siddiqui, who died in mysterious circumstances on June 9 in a house she was sharing with Mr Qureshi, requested the Additional Sessions Judge Mirza Nisar Baig to adjourn the hearing as they were still collecting evidence.

They said the Chemical Examiners Report in the case was also awaited from Lahore.

Counsel for the former minister, Sardar Ishaq, requested the judge to direct the police not to add new sections in the case meanwhile.

SHO Ghulam Mohammad Baqir of the Shalimar police station however told the judge that new sections were being added in the FIR (First Information Report) as new evidence emerged.

Mr Qureshi’s counsel Mian Abdul Rauf had filed the pre-arrest bail petition in the court after getting information that police was likely to arrest his client by adding PPC 319 to PPC 344 and 346 in the case registered against him on June 13.

But the police added PPC 316 instead after the judge granted him pre-arrest interim bail, forcing him to file another pre- arrest bail application in the court on June 14. The judge ruled that he did not need fresh bail.

Meanwhile, Session Judge Rafiuz Zaman has rejected a petition Mr Qureshi filed on June 15, requesting the court to recover his cook and driver being held by the Shalimar police since June 9.

He apprehended that the police torture them to give evidence against him.

On the direction of the judge, SHO Baqir produced cook Allahyar and driver Zulfiqar who told the court that they were arrested on June 16, and were taken to a magistrate the next day who remanded them in police custody for two days.

They said the police had been interrogating them and allowed them to go home in evening.

But the condition of the two showed they were under strain.

Sources quoted Allahyar as saying that he was working with the former minister for the last one year and during the period he was not allowed to go on the first floor of the house.

He worked on the ground floor from morning till evening and used to place meals twice a day at stairs from where the minister picked it.

More than a dozen policemen were deployed outside the District and Session Court where the former minister arrived in a silver car to be greeted a group of supporters.