KARACHI: A contempt of court case against the inspector general of police and his subordinates on Wednesday was once again adjourned by the Sindh High Court as another bench member declined to proceed with it.

The case was then referred to Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah for placing it before another bench, as one of the members of the two-judge bench, Justice Sadiq Hussain Bhatti, disassociated himself from the case.

Earlier, Justice Karim Khan Agha had refused to proceed with the case on account of his personal relationship with the petitioner.

The contempt proceedings against IGP Jamali and others were initiated on the petition of disowned Pakistan Peoples Party leader Dr Zulfikar Mirza for besieging the SHC and adjoining antiterrorism courts on May 19 and 23, 2015.

During the May 23 siege of the SHC, uniformed and plain-clothes personnel had used force to arrest a number of associates of Dr Mirza who, along with him, appeared in court to seek confirmation of their pre-arrest bail in several cases.

Dr Mirza’s guards and some of his associates as well as media persons were manhandled at the main gate of the court’s building. Several vehicles parked in the area and cameras of media persons were also damaged during the action.

The officers pleaded ‘innocent’ but opted to face the charges during the trial.

The court was adjourned till Thursday.

Earlier, the bench had rejected the police officers’ apologies on two occasions but had postponed formal indictment.

Those formally indicted for contempt include IGP Ghulam Hyder Jamali, former city police chief Additional IG Ghulam Qadir Thebo, DIG-South Dr Jamil Ahmed, DIG-West Feroze Shah, SSP captain (retd) Mohammad Asad, officer in charge of the Special Security Unit SSP major (retd) Saleem, Additional IG (legal) Faisal Bashir Memon, SSP-City Fida Hussain Janwari, Saddar-SP Zeeshan Shafiq Siddiqui, former Saddar SP Raees Abdul Ghani, SP Tahir Noorani of police headquarters (West) and Sub-Inspector Jehangir Mahar.

Arbab Rahim’s plea disposed of A division bench disposed of a constitutional petition of former chief minister Dr Arbab Rahim against the registration of criminal cases against him.

The matter was disposed of after the provincial government law officer informed the court that no inquiry was in progress against the former chief minister, nor was any case being registered against him.

In his petition, Dr Rahim had claimed that he had learnt reliably about a case being registered against him for allegedly releasing the interned Muttahida Qaumi Movement workers during his tenure as chief minister. He had asked the court to direct the respondent authorities not to registered the false case against him.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2016