HYDERABAD: A single judge bench of the Sindh High Court Hyderabad circuit on Friday granted protective bail to four cotton ginners of Sindh — who are members of the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) — in a sum of Rs30,000 each for five days and non-bailable warrants (NBW) if any issued by the trial court shall remain suspended during the period.

The bail order shall cease to have its effect on the expiry of five days or when the applicants surrender before court concerned, whichever is earlier. If the applicants failed to appear before the court concerned in the stipulated period of time, the surety furnished shall automatically stand forfeited.

A case against Liaquat Ali Lakhani, Gopal Mal and Kishinchand aka Kishoomal and Jai Kumar was registered after a PCGA team raided certain cotton ginning factories involved in adulteration of ginned cotton. They were represented by Ramesh Kumar advocate.

They sought protective bail in FIR No 108/25 registered with police station B-section of Tando Adam in Sanghar under Sections 506(ii), 427, 504, 34 PPC. The petitioners’ counsel argued that a false case was registered against the applicants and they intended to surrender before the court for an appropriate relief, but apprehended their arrest by police with mala fide intentions.

The court allowed bails without touching merits and demerits of the case in order to enable the applicants surrender before the trial court for relief.

Complainant in the FIR, Mohammad Asghar, manager of Junaid Cotton Ginning Factory, alleged that on Oct 18, the applicants barged into the factory and threatened to teach him a lesson for diverting their customers by offering them more price for procuring cotton. He said that he was beaten up. He said Mohammad Aslam and Mohammad Anis entered his room after hearing the noise. He said the suspects threatened to “deal” with him next time if he did not stop that practice.

The defence counsel argued that the complainant had levelled vague allegations and he did not provide close circuit television camera footage to police and to the PCGA, had any such incident taken place. He argued that the PCGA had authorised those four applicants to visit any factory for checking adulteration in cotton by ginners in view of complaints that some ginners were mixing cotton waste in the ginned cotton.

He said that no use of weapon as alleged in the FIR and nothing of that sort was recovered either. He said that in fact it was other way round and the complainant had used strong arm tactics against his clients.

The bench comprises of Justice Khadim Hussain Tunio.

Candidate challenges SPSC merit list

A division bench of the Sindh High Court Hyderabad circuit on Thursday directed an additional registrar of the court to play USB (universal serial bus) of the interview of a petitioner-candidate for a Sindh Public Service Commission (SPSC) post in his office in the presence of the petitioner, his counsel and an SPSC officer on Oct 25.

The USB would then be handed over to the SPSC officer. The court adjourned the matter for Oct 27.

When petitioner’s counsel Barrister Jawad Qureshi submitted that recording in the USB might be played in the office of the additional registrar of the court, the assistant advocate general agreed. The order was passed on a petition filed by Mohammad Awais Danish, a resident of Sakrand.

According to the case, the petitioner applied for the post of subject specialist (BS-17) following advertisement of Sep 25, 2024 by the SPSC. He cleared the test with 65 marks out of 100. He appeared for an interview on May 12, 2025 but was not assessed properly, raising doubts about the objectivity of the process. The final merit list was published on June 18, 2025, excluding his name despite higher marks. He said his exclusion appeared unjustified.

He filed representation before the SPSC on June 24, 2025, but it was not decided within the mandatory 15 days nor was he given personal hearing. He alleged that there were serious irregularities in the final merit list. He said a private respondent, Ishfaque, son of Abdul Hadi, was initially listed with urban domicile in the first merit list, but shown as rural candidate in the final merit list while respondent No.6, Zainab Abdul Rehman, was first shown as urban candidate but later as that of rural. He said domicile changes indicated manipulation to give unfair advantage to certain candidates.

He said discrepancies were evident in the manipulation of marks of the candidates as respondent Beena Gill had originally secured 33 marks which were shown as 35 in the final list. Respondent Iqra Islam had secured 47.5 marks, but the final list showed 47 marks. He said the SPSC published pre-interview written test list on April 14, showing varying datum marks across different categories. However, such marks were later illegally changed.

He said selective illegal change of datum marks post-publication of the merit list was favouritism from the SPSC and indicated corruption and abuse of authority. He said that of the 38 nominated candidates in the final list, 21 were those who secured lesser marks than the petitioner, but they appeared successful while the petitioner was denied fair treatment. He said the SPSC was illegally proceeding with the appointment of the candidates pursuant to the merit list without deciding his representation.

He said that in the previous petitions (1708 of 2023 and 1709 of 2023) before that bench, the SPSC was directed to record audio and video of all interviews for the posts of BS-16 and above, showing candidates and panel members.

In the present case, he said, no recording of the petitioner’s interview was provided by the respondents and if such recording existed, the same be produced before the court. He prayed to the court to declare the final merit list of June 18 as illegal and direct the respondents to produce complete audio and video recording of the petitioner’s interview of May 12.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2025