KARACHI, Aug 7: The Sindh High Court on Thursday adjourned to Friday the hearing of a second writ petition agitating the disappearance of businessman Saifullah Paracha while on his way from Karachi to Bangkok on July 5.
The petition came up before a division bench comprising Justices Shabbir Ahmed and Gulzar Ahmed in the afternoon and the hearing was adjourned after brief submissions by petitioner Farhat Paracha’s counsel, Nisar A. Mujahid, due to paucity of time.
The counsel informed the court that the petitioner’s husband was promptly issued a Thai visa following a message from his American partner, Charles Anteby, and seen off by her at the Karachi airport on July 5. If the FIA statement in response to the first petition, since dismissed as withdrawn, that he was cleared by it for the Thai Airways flight TG502 and was allotted seat number 62-F by the airline was correct, Mr Paracha must have been whisked off in the course of embarkation or of disembarkation, the counsel maintained.
He said all the necessary parties involved had been impleaded as respondents and they should be asked to disclose what happened to the businessman. According to a call received by the petitioner from Charles Atenby on July 6, the car he sent to pick up Mr Paracha from the Bangkok airport returned empty.
The petitioner apprehends that like her son, Uzair Paracha, her husband might also have been taken into custody for his alleged links with Al Qaeda.
PEARLE CASE: Appeals filed by and against convicts in the US journalist Daniel Pearle kidnap-cum-murder case were again adjourned to a date in office on Thursday due TO the absence of the appellants’ counsel.
The main accused, Ahmed Omar Shaikh, was awarded death penalty and co-accused Fahad Nasim, Salman Saquib and Adil Shaikh were jailed for life by an anti-terrorist court in July 2002.
They were also fined Rs500,000 each and ordered to pay Rs2 million to their victim’s widow by way of compensation. They were found to have kidnapped the Wall Street correspondent from a Karachi restaurant and tortured him to death in January 2002.
All the accused challenged their sentences and conviction in the high court while the prosecution moved appeals for enhancement of life terms awarded to the three co-accused to death penalty. The appeals were filed within the stipulated period but have been pending adjudication despite the Anti- Terrorist Act provisions for prompt disposal.
They were adjourned to a date in office by a division bench comprising Justices Ghulam Nabi Soomro and Mohammad Afzal Soomro.
LYARI EXPRESSWAY: A division bench of the Sindh High Court issued notices to the respondent city and provincial governments on Thursday in an application seeking inspection of the Lyari Expressway construction site at the Hassan Aulia village to ascertain whether it could be constructed without displacing a large number of people.
Moved by Advocate M. Ilyas Khan, the application says that an alternative design for the expressway ensuring its construction without demolition of old settlements had already been submitted to the bench with the written arguments offered on behalf of the petitioners belonging to the village. It requested that a third team of experts and engineers be constituted to examine the plan.
The bench, consisting of Justices Sabihuddin Ahmed and S. Ali Aslam Jafri, directed that notices be issued to the respondents for August 13.