LAHORE, July 18: An anti-terrorism court on Friday declared PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif and a former police official proclaimed offenders owing to their persistent absence from the proceedings of a case, accusing them and six others of having murdered five youths in a staged police encounter during 1997.

The court, which had initiated the proclamation process against the former chief minister and former SHO Babar Ashraf Ansari on the last hearing under Section 87 CrPC, issued their permanent arrest warrants after being informed that both could not be traced by the process server at the address stated on the arrest warrants. While declaring both proclaimed offenders, the court directed the police officials to arrest them whenever possible and produce them before it for the trial.

The plea for the confiscation of the properties of the two accused was turned down by the court on a ruling that the complainant should move a formal application in this regard so that the court could issue orders accordingly.

The court fixed July 24 for further proceedings while directing that the Sabzazar police station SHO to produce co-accused Tariq Asghar whose warrants were also issued on the last hearing.

On the next date of hearing, the court would also take up applications of the legal heirs of the two deceased —- Haider and Rauf —- pleading that former Lahore SSP Ahmad Raza Tahir, who was later on exonerated from the final chargesheet submitted in the court, should also be summoned as the co-accused.

ASI Shamshad Ahmad, former DSP Umar Virk, SI Lala Roshan and two ASIs —- Zulfiqar Ahmad, Muhammad Manzoor —- who are also among the other five accused in this case have already appeared in the court and furnished bail bonds of Rs100,000 each as token of guarantee that they would not abscond the trial proceedings.

Allegedly, the accused police officials shot dead five youths —- Salahudin, Waseem, Haider, Rauf and Wakeel —- in a staged police encounter in the Sabzazar area on April 27, 1998. The FIR lodged in March, 1999, after the intervention of the Lahore High Court further stated that this encounter was staged on the orders of the then chief minister Shahbaz Sharif who, according to the complainant Saeed Salahuddin, used extra-judicial killings to control crime.

The chargesheet was delayed for over one year by the police on the pretext that the original record of the case could not be produced owing to certain administrative problems. However, the chargesheet was finally put up last month after which the court started summoning the accused.