KARACHI: Former Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Saleem Shahzad was on Monday formally arrested as soon as he landed at Karachi airport from Dubai in a case in which he had been declared a proclaimed offender.

“The Karachi police formally arrested the MQM’s former leader, Saleem Shahzad, at the airport in the Dr Asim case,” said a brief statement issued by a police spokesperson. “Further investigations are under way.”

He, along with some other politicians, has been nominated in a case against former federal minister Dr Asim Hussain who was allegedly involved in treating and harbouring wounded suspects at his Dr Ziauddin hospitals. An antiterrorism court had declared him a proclaimed offender in the case in August last year.

Mr Shahzad, who remained a member of the National Assembly in 1988 and 1990, had announced his return to Pakistan on Twitter on Sunday. He first returned to the country in 2007 — after remaining in self-exile for about 15 years.

He was expelled from and then taken back into the MQM in 2009. In 2013, he was sidelined by the party and a year later his basic membership was suspended indefinitely for violating party discipline. At that time the MQM said that it was not in any way responsible for his business dealings.

Neither the Altaf Hussain-led MQM nor its two spin-offs — the MQM-Pakistan and Pak Sarzameen Party — expressed any interest in his return to the country.

At the airport, Mr Shahzad told a private news channel that he returned to the country voluntarily and was ready to face cases to prove his innocence.

He said he was suffering from cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, but he was ready and willing to cooperate with all institutions for improving the situation in Karachi.

“I have come here to do politics,” he said, adding that he had left the MQM the day the party supremo raised anti-Pakistan slogans on Aug 22, 2016.

Meanwhile, Malir SSP Rao Anwar, who led a police team to arrest Mr Shahzad, told Dawn that he would be produced before an antiterrorism court on Tuesday in the terrorists’ treatment case registered at the North Nazimabad police station.

However, a North Nazimabad police officer, Mohammed Naeem Khan, said that the held politician was so far not given in his custody.

The Malir SSP said that the police were also looking into other cases against him. He said several cases were registered against Mr Shahzad but all such cases were cancelled after the infamous National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). But the then chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry had ordered reopening of all cases by declaring NRO void, he added.

Mr Shahzad is among six politicians — Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar, MQM MPA Rauf Siddiqui, PSP President Anis Kaimkhani, PPP’s Abdul Qadir Patel, Pasban’s Usman Moazzam — who had allegedly phoned Dr Asim for the treatment of the wounded suspects of their respective parties who got injured in encounters with law-enforcement agencies.

The other five politicians had got bail from a court of law in the case.

Published in Dawn February 7th, 2017