ISLAMABAD, April 12: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday granted six-day interim bail to retired Gen Pervez Musharraf after he surrendered before the court in the judges’ detention case in which he had been declared a proclaimed offender.
The court directed him to deposit Rs500,000 as surety bond and join the investigation into the case and also appear before the court on April 18, the next date of hearing for arguing the maintainability of the bail application since according to IHC Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui the appropriate forum for seeking pre-arrest bail was the sessions court.
An FIR against Gen Musharraf was registered with the Secretariat Police Station in August 11, 2009 on the complaint of Chaudhry Mohammad Aslam Ghumman advocate. He had asked the police to initiate legal proceedings against the former president for detaining over 60 judges, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, after proclamation of the state of emergency in the country on Nov 3, 2007.
In his bail application, Gen Musharraf termed the imposition of emergency an “unfortunate incident” and said that after November 2007 he had remained in the country till 2008 but the petitioner had never tried to lodge such a complaint. The case was lodged with mala fide intent and after a delay of over 22 months.
He alleged that the former government of the PPP had instituted a number of cases against him for keeping him away from politics and the recent litigation was also aimed at disrupting his election campaign.
Meanwhile, to provide security to Gen Musharraf, Rangers had taken over the security of the IHC premises and its surroundings by Thursday evening. Rangers and his personal guards were deployed at different places in the IHC early on Friday morning.
Malik Qamar Afzal, Gen Musharraf’s counsel, reached the court a couple of hours before his client. He filed an urgent bail application for same day hearing before the IHC Chief Justice Mohammad Anwar Khan Kasi who referred the matter to Justice Siddiqui.
Justice Siddiqui took up the application at 10am and asked Mr Afzal, “Where is the accused person?”
The counsel replied that because of security concerns the accused had not come and would take half an hour to reach the court.
A visibly annoyed Justice Siddiqui said that to wait for an accused person was not the court’s tradition.
After hearing other cases, at about 10.30am the judge left for his usual tea break. Within a few minutes Gen Musharraf arrived in his bullet-proof vehicle but was informed that the judge had left the courtroom.
He remained inside the vehicle till the tea break was over at 11am.
