KARACHI: Dr Asim Hus­sain, PPP’s Karachi president and a close aide of former president Asif Ali Zardari, will have to wait till at least the first week of May to go abroad for medical treatment as his plea for the removal of his name from the Exit Control List could not come up for hearing before the Sindh High Court due to paucity of time.

A two-judge bench, headed by Justice Mohammad Junaid Ghaffar, on Tuesday had to adjourn the matter as the court rose for the day in the afternoon. The bench ordered its office to fix the next hearing for the former minister’s petition in the first week of next month.

Earlier on April 15, an antiterrorism court had allowed him to travel abroad against a surety of Rs2 million. It ruled that if Dr Asim does not return, the state machinery should take over his hospitals.

The petitioner said that a medical board had recommended that he should undergo spinal surgery abroad. The petition will be taken up by the court after a few days, said the counsel to the former minister.

The close aide of Asif Zardari was released from a sub-jail set up for him at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre on March 31, after spending a little over 19 months in detention.

He was granted bail in two corruption references filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for allegedly causing huge losses to the national exchequer through corrupt practices.

Dr Asim, who was serving as chairman of the Sindh Higher Education Commission, was picked up by Rangers personnel on Aug 26, 2015 for his alleged involvement in offences falling within the ambit of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

He remained in Rangers’ preventive detention for 90 days before being handed over to police in a case registered against him and others for allegedly treating and harbouring suspected terrorists, political militants and gangsters at his hospital on the request of Rauf Siddiqui, Wasim Akhtar and Saleem Shahzad of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM); Pak Sarzameen Party president Anis Kaimkhani; PPP’s Abdul Qadir Patel, and Pasban’s Usman Moazzam.

Later, NAB obtained his custody for interrogation and investigation into his alleged involvement in corruption. One of the two corruption cases pertained to causing loss of Rs462.5 billion by allegedly misusing his powers, while the other related to award of processing gas from five fields in lower Sindh without conducting an open auction, incurring a huge loss of Rs17.34bn to the national exchequer.

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2017