KARACHI: An antiterrorism court on Friday reserved its judgement on bail applications of a suspect detained in cases pertaining to armed robbery, encounter, attempt to murder and possessing illicit arms.

The suspect, Waseem Abbas, was detained and booked for allegedly committing an armed house robbery within the remit of the Surjani Town police station. However, the case took an interesting turn on Friday when the matter came up for hearing before the ATC-II judge.

Complainant Syed Zahid Hussain deposed before the judge that the police had registered a false case against the detained man, who was his neighbour and had not committed the robbery on his house as was mentioned in the FIR.

He further testified that policemen entered his house on the night of Nov 28 in search of a robber and climbed the roof from where they jumped on the roof of the house of his neighbour, Waseem Abbas, who was asleep there.

The policemen shot at Abbas in his leg and falsely declared him robber, the complainant said, adding that later he was again shot at twice to give the incident a colour of an encounter with police before taking him to the police station.

Advocate Sardar Liaquat Ali Khan, the suspect’s counsel, contended that the policemen had injured his client in a ‘staged’ encounter and then framed him in two criminal cases of encounter, attempted murder, armed robbery and possession of illegal weapon just to hush up their own illegal acts.

The counsel moved two bail applications requesting the court to release his client, saying that Waseem Abbas was drove an auto-rickshaw to earn his living.

After hearing arguments from the assistant prosecutor general, the ATC-II judge reserved her judgement on the bail applications and fixed Jan 9 to pronounce it.

The judge also fixed the matter for indictment of the suspect on the next date.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2019