ISLAMABAD: A man accused in nine fraud cases escaped from a heavily guarded local court on Tuesday, after the judge rejected his interim bail plea.

Police sources said that the accused and his brother jumped on the court staff and started wrestling them when the Additional Sessions Judge Shahrukh Arjumand delivered his order. They used the confusion created by the melee to escape as policemen waited outside the courtroom to arrest him.

All the police could do after losing him was to register a new case against the alleged fraudster and his accomplice, adding a new string of charges to the old ones.

The police charged him after his escape under PPCs 353, 224, 225 and 186 which deal with assault or use of force to deter, resist or obstruct a public servant, or any other person, from discharging his duty or functions.

The charges filed under PPC 420 against the accused related to cheating, forgery and dishonestly inducing the delivery of property.

A citizen, Mohammad Shafi, whose complaint of fraud to the Ramna police last December had brought the accused to Judge Arjumand’s court to seek confirmation of the interim bail, granted to him by another court. Mr Shafi, however, suspects that police had been conniving with the accused.

Mr Shafi told Dawn the accused had been his tenant in a building in G-12 sector some years back. Later, the tenant wanted to buy the property and handed two cheques of Rs8 million and Rs0.5 million.

But the bank dishonoured the cheque of Rs8 million, he said and he registered a case against the accused at Shalimar police station. According to Mr Shafi, the accused tempered with the receipt he had given for the Rs0.5 million cheque and turned it into a receipt for Rs8million.

That forgery, he said, won him interim bail from a court because the police investigation officer declared the receipt genuine, although the FIA had declared it tempered with.

Mr Shafi said the accused subsequently sold his building to five different people.

All of this and the absence of the investigation officer from the court hearing, made Mr Shafi suspect that the police were helping the accused avoid arrest.

Mr Shafi claimed upon learning the accused was appearing in a court to seek bail in a case of fraudulently selling a car, he informed the investigating officer in his case.

“I informed the officer of my case to come to the court and arrest him, but he arrived when the man was gone,” he said.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2015

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