LAHORE, Feb 6: The Lahore High Court office on Friday returned for the third time a writ petition against the arrest and debriefing of nuclear scientists and others associated with the Khan Research Laboratories.

LHC registrar's office maintained its objection that petitioner Khwaja Saad Rafiq, Punjab secretary-general of the PML-N, should prove his locus standi in challenging the arrest and debriefing of KRL scientists, engineers and a private secretary to Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Another objection upheld by the office was that a similar petition was pending with LHC's Rawalpindi bench and that the same contention could not be raised at two seats of a high court. The PML-N leader was advised by the office to file the petition at the Rawalpindi bench.

Khwaja Saad had filed the petition through Advocate Chaudhry Naseer Ahmad Bhutta who was not present during process of the petition. He however told Dawn that the petitioner might withdraw the contention and file a fresh writ petition because many changes had taken place since it was filed two weeks back.

According to him, the president pardoning Dr AQ Khan on a request for clemency, formal detention of six of the arrested scientists under the MPO and release of some of them had created a situation in which the pleas raised in the earlier petition had become redundant.

He said the LHC office had taken up the writ petition as an objection petition after the petitioner challenged the objections raised by registrar's office.