PESHAWAR: Issuing a stay order, a single-member Peshawar High Court bench on Friday stopped the provincial government from shifting the suspect in a bounced cheque case to Karachi till further orders.

Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan issued notices to the provincial home secretary and superintendent of the Peshawar Central Prison for Oct 11 directing them to respond to a petition filed by the suspect, Sajid Riaz, to seek transit bail.

The petitioner, who is the owner of a travelling agency, was named in an FIR registered against him on April 14, 2020, at a police station in Karachi on the complaint of another person, who alleged that the petitioner had given him a cheque of Rs2.3 million on account of some business transactions, but the cheque couldn’t be cashed and bounded, which was a crime under Section 489-F of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Advocate Danyal Asad Chamkani appeared for the petitioner and said the Sindh government had requested the KP government on Sept 20, 2021, to hand over the petitioner to it and on Sept 29, the KP home secretary had given permission for his arrest and shifting to Karachi.

He added that on Oct 1, his client was arrested by the officials of the East Cantonment police station under Section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and was sent to prison by a local court.

The counsel contended that his client had erroneously filed a petition with the district and sessions judge for the grant of transit bail to him, but the court turned it down declaring that if he wasn’t shifted in the next 10 days to Karachi, he could approach it yet again.

He argued that under the law, a district judge couldn’t decide the matter of the shifting of an accused to another province and instead, the matter fell in the domain of the high court.

Mr Chamkani contended that he had only been seeking transit bail for his client from the high court so that he could be released on bail for going to Karachi and applying for bail with the relevant court.

He requested the bench to grant transit bail to the petitioner for a few days saying the sought-after bail will help him contact the relevant Karachi court for the purpose.

Thee counsel added that his client belonged to a respectable family and had never committed any offence.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2021