KARACHI: An antiterrorism court has reserved its order on the bail application of the outlawed Peoples Amn Committee chief Uzair Baloch in the decade-old Arshad Pappu murder case.

The alleged Lyari kingpin, Uzair, former MNA of the Pakistan Peoples Party Shahjahan Baloch and several other alleged gangsters along with some police officers have been charged with murdering their rival Arshad Pappu, his brother Yasir Arafat and an aide Jumma Shera after being kidnapped from Defence in March 2013.

The Rangers produced Uzair before the ATC-X as he was being kept on the premises of the Mitha Ram Hostel, currently used by the paramilitary force by declaring it a sub-jail.

The lawyers for Uzair and co-accused Mushtaq Khan moved bail applications, and after hearing arguments from the counsel for applicants and prosecutor, the court reserved orders on both bail applications for pronouncement till Sept 30.

The court also noted that the supervisory investigating officer of the case, inspector Liaquat, was absent without any intimation, while no prosecution witness was available to record the evidence.

Thereafter, the ATC issued a show-cause notice to the IO and also reissued a notice to judicial magistrate Mashooq Ali Palejo, who is a prosecution witness in the case, for recording his evidence at next hearing.

The court also directed the prosecution to produce its other witnesses as well as the case property on Sept 30.

According to the prosecution, Pappu with his brother, confidant and 10-year-old son had gone to attend the party of a friend in DHA on the night of March 16, 2013. However, the boy came home around midnight and informed his mother that around 20 men in two vehicles, including some police officers, came to the flat in DHA and allegedly took his father and the two others away.

It maintained that the police officers had allegedly handed them over to the Uzair group in Lyari and rival group had killed the captives after subjecting them to torture and bodies of Pappu and his brother were thrown in manholes in Kalakot after being mutilated.

A case was registered at the Kalakot police station on a directive of the Supreme Court.

Arshad Pappu was also booked in around 60 cases, but was never convicted in any case since most of key witnesses either did not turn up to testify against him or turned hostile before the courts.

He was released in the middle of February 2012 from a prison in Balochistan following his acquittal in what appeared to be the last case against him pertaining to the murder of Faiz Mohammad aka Mama Faizu, a transporter and father of Uzair Jan.

Once known for his close association with the PPP, particularly some of the its leaders, Uzair is facing dozens of cases.

He was arrested by Rangers in 2016 under mysterious circumstances, kept under 90-day preventive detention and then handed over to police to face trials in over 50 cases. He has so far been acquitted in over a dozen criminal cases.

However, a military court had sentenced him to 12 years in prison in 2017 for his involvement in espionage activities and working for foreign intelligence agencies.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2023