LAHORE, Sept 7: An anti-terrorism court judge ordered police on Friday to arrest PML-N leader Shahbaz Sharif on his return to the country.

“Whenever and wherever he lands he should be arrested and produced in the court,” Judge Shabbir Hussain Chattha said.

Shahbaz Sharif is scheduled to land at the Islamabad airport on Sept 10 along with his brother Nawaz Sharif.

The arrest order was issued in a case registered against Shahbaz Sharif at the Sabzazar police station in 1999, accusing him of ordering extra-judicial killing of five people, when he was the chief minister of Punjab.

The court had first issued Mr Sharif’s arrest warrants when he was in exile in 2003. Mr Sharif made an attempt to return home in 2004, but he was sent back from the Lahore airport.

The court issued its Friday order on an application filed by Mr Saeeduddin, the complainant in the Sabzazar police encounter case.

He requested the court to order the arrest of Mr Sharif who planned to return home on Sept 10. The complainant accused the government of protecting his son’s ‘killer’, saying Mr Sharif had returned to the country in 2004 but the government sent him back.

It may be mentioned that an anti-terrorism court of Lahore had declared Shahbaz Sharif and one Mohammad Tariq Asghar absconders in the case. The court had also separated their trial from that of the main accused.

The FIR had been registered on the directives of the Lahore High Court. Mr Sharif’s name had been inserted in the FIR on an initiative of the Punjab police.

According to the FIR, the Sabzazar police had raided Mr Saeeduddin’s house on April 21, 1998, taken his son, Salahuddin, into custody and later demanded Rs5,000 for his release. The complainant said that on April 27, 1998, he came to know from a newspaper report that his son and four others, Wakeel, Waseem, Haider and Abdul Rauf, had been killed in a ‘shootout’ with the Sabzazar police.

He alleged that the ‘encounter’ had been staged on the orders of Mr Sharif.

Other accused in the case include Lahore’s former senior superintendent of police Ahmad Raza Tahir, deputy superintendent of police Umar Virk, Mohammad Asghar, assistant sub-inspector Zulfiqar Ahmad, ASI Lala Roshan, head constable Noorul Hassan, constable Abid Hussain, Shamshad Ahmad, Munir Ahmad, Mohammad Riaz, Manzoor Ahmad and Hakim Ali.

The court asked the government to file a reply on a separate plea for confiscation of Shahbaz Sharif’s property.

Mr Saeeduddin said that under the law, the court had the power to order seizure of the property of a person declared a proclaimed offender.

He requested the court to direct the Federal Board of Revenue to identify Mr Sharif’s properties in Pakistan. He himself identified the Ittefaq Sugar Mills, Ittefaq Foundries, Hudabia Sugar Mills, Sharif City on the Raiwind Road and Mr Sharif’s home in Model Town, Lahore, as properties which could be seized.