LAHORE, Nov 6: More than 50 people, most of them rights activists, who were arrested in a police raid on the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Garden Town office on Sunday were released on Tuesday.

The release order by a special judicial magistrate came in the evening but it was unclear whether the detenues were granted bail or the case against them was withdrawn.

The surety bonds for the bail were to be submitted on Tuesday.

Around 54 people, including HRCP director I A Rehman and secretary general Iqbal Haider, were detained by the Garden Town police for holding a meeting to discuss imposition of emergency in the country.

However, according to Kot Lakhpat Jail Superintendent Javed Lateef, the release came after the magistrate, Chaudhry Irfaan Qadir, accepted the bail application of petitioners on Tuesday morning.

He said the order declaring the three houses, where the activists were detained, sub-jails had been revoked and all officials deployed there were called back.

Capital City Police Officer Malik Muhammad Iqbal also claimed that all 54 people were released on bail granted by the court.

“Although surety bonds are not furnished by them yet, they have been allowed to go home in order to save them from inconvenience,” he said.

The defence counsel, earlier, in a post-arrest bail petition stated the petitioners were innocent and they had been falsely implicated in the case registered under 16 MPO and sections 146, 147 and 188 of the PPC.

He further submitted the petitioners were not staging any protest on road rather they were in a meeting of a human rights organisation within the premises of an office from where the police arrested them.

The magistrate, through an order, stated the offences did not fall within the prohibitory clause and petitioners were admitted to bail on furnishing the bonds in the sum of Rs30,000 each.

The detained people and their families were seen confused about the bail acceptance and case withdrawal till the last moment.

A woman lawyer, Saima Khawaja, who was arrested in the raid told Dawn that she was attending the meeting as an ordinary citizen when police broke up the meeting, dragged and bundled the participants into buses and took them to Model Town police station.

“Around 24 women, eight of them aged between 50 and 70, were taken from one place to another during the last 48 hours without realising the fact that the offences were bail able and women could not be kept in jails under such offences,” she argued.