Days after the Supreme Court set aside the bail granted to him in the 2012 tragic murder of 20-year-old Shahzeb Khan, Shahrukh Jatoi was admitted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) in Karachi due to being "unwell", it emerged on Saturday.

Jatoi was brought to JMPC from Karachi Central Jail on Friday because he was "feeling unwell", and was admitted for treatment, hospital sources told Dawn.

When contacted, JPMC Executive Director Dr Seemin Jamali said she could not disclose the nature of Jatoi's illness due to privacy reasons.

She added, however, that a patient is not admitted to the hospital unless they have an illness or ailment.

Before he was released on bail in December, Jatoi had spent nearly two-and-a-half months at JPMC, where he was undergoing treatment. The hospital had been declared a sub-jail.

Jatoi was among the three accused — Siraj Talpur and Sajjad Talpur being the other two — who had been arrested after SC revoked their bails earlier this month. The fourth accused, Ghulam Murtaza Lashari, a servant of the Talpurs, is in jail.

The three accused, who were arrested from the court in Islamabad, were later brought to Karachi.

Bail revoked

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar on February 1 had set aside the Sindh High Court (SHC) judgement in which the Shahzeb murder case was remanded back to the criminal court for a de novo trial and antiterrorism charges were removed.

The apex court was seized with a joint appeal moved by 10 civil society activists — including Jibran Nasir, Jamshed Raza Mahmood and Afiya Shehrbano Zia — challenging the Nov 28, 2017 SHC order to set aside antiterrorism charges by holding that the murder case did not fall in the jurisdiction of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

However, the Supreme Court converted the appeals into a suo motu case under Article 184(3) of the Constitution with a directive to the court office to assign a proper case number to the petitions.

Shahzeb Khan, the son of Aurangzeb Khan, a deputy superintendent police, was shot dead in Karachi on the night between Dec 24 and 25, 2012 when he was returning home after attending a wedding ceremony with his sister in the Country Club Apartments Karachi.

The murder of the youngster mobilised hundreds of people who gathered outside the Karachi Press Club to protest against the incident requesting the then chief justice to take suo motu action to ensure arrest of the accused.

In Dec 2012, Shahrukh Jatoi had fled the country but had to be brought back on the orders of the Supreme Court. Shahrukh Jatoi and co-accused Siraj Talpur were sentenced to death by the antiterrorism court. Sajjad Talpur and Ghulam Murtaza were handed life imprisonment for their involvement in the murder.

Subsequently the convicts filed an appeal in the SHC which annulled antiterrorism clauses in the case and referred it back to the district and sessions court of Karachi’s South district.

The district and sessions court on Dec 23, 2017 ordered the release of Shahrukh Jatoi and the other accused after Shahzeb Khan’s father submitted an affidavit requesting the approval of Shahrukh's bail and dropping of the case as he had pardoned his son’s killer in the name of Allah.

The judge, Imdad Hussain Khoso, ordered the release of the convicts against a surety of Rs500,000 each when he was told that both sides had reconciled and the testimony had been submitted to the court with mutual consent.