LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) has disposed of a petition filed by one of the national baseball players, Zaheer Bashir, after the Pakistan Federation Baseball (PFB) handed over his passport through the honourable court after getting cancellation of his Canadian visa here on Monday.

The petitioner has moved the LHC that the federation is not returning his passport. The federation had explained to the court that Zaheer was the part of the national team, which was to participate in an international event in Canada.

But as the federation got visa after some delay, its team could not travel to Canada according to the plan. And to avoid misuse of the visa by any player, the federation had held back their passports and sought guidance from the Canadian High Commissioner in this regard.

As Zaheer has moved the LHC, the federation got his visa cancelled from the Canadian High Commissioner, and on its advice also handed over all the other passports, too so that no player could travel to Canada unnecessarily as it could defame the country’s name.

Meanwhile, PBF secretary Khawar Shah said the Canadian High Commissioner office appreciated the move of the federation of avoiding misuse of the visa.

The Canadian High Commissioner will keep the passports of the baseball players till Sept 12 as the national team will need it to travel to Incheon, South Korea to participate in the Asian Games to be held in September-October.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2014