KARACHI, June 1: The Saddar town police denied on Wednesday having illegally confined or tortured petitioner Mirza Aslam Baig. In their comments on Baig’s petition, submitted through Additional Advocate-General M. Ahmed Pirzada, the town police officer and the Artillery Maidan SHO said they received a complaint from the US consulate-general security office that a Nissan jeep with tinted glasses followed consulate vehicles on Shahrah-i-Faisal from the airport to the consulate building several times.
It was intercepted by a police vehicle detailed on security duty and brought to the consulate-general with its occupants, Mirza Aslam Baig and his brother Mirza Mohsin Baig, on March 22 afternoon when found tailing a consulate vehicle the fourth time in a week.
A police party reached the consulate soon afterward and security officer Shoaib Sardar handed over the jeep and its occupants to the party. The SHO said Aslam and Mohsin Baig could not give satisfactory replies to the police queries and were taken into custody under Section 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code for interrogation at the police station. However, nothing came to light as a result of investigation and they were let off after Shaikh Adnan, a resident of Khyaban-i-Baharia, stood surety for them.
Justices Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Azizullah M. Memon, who constituted the division bench seized of the petition, asked security officer Shoaib Sardar to file a personal affidavit and directed the office to repeat notice to the consulate. The hearing was adjourned to June 10.
COMPENSATION: The Sindh High Court has decreed against the National Logistic Cell and the Karachi Development Authority (defunct), ordering them to pay jointly or severally a sum of Rs2.7 million in a lawsuit for compensation in the accidental death of a driver of Pakistan International Airlines, adds PPI.
Nasreen Akhtar and her children Irfan Khan, Afsheen Akhtar, Suleman Khan, legal heirs of the PIA van driver, filed a suit for the recovery of Rs3.5 million against the defendants accusing them of negligence which caused death of driver Sher Azam and three airhostesses on April 11, 1993.
The plaintiffs through their counsel Nasir Maqsood alleged that the defunct KDA was getting a road repaired by a contractor causing closure of one track of Sharea Faisal. The two-way traffic was allowed to continue without taking any precautionary measures.
He submitted that the van met with an accident with an NLC trailer coming from the opposite direction in a rash and negligent manner. The NLC denied that its trailer was being driven rashly while the KDA took the plea that the accident took place due to negligence of both drivers of the NLC and PIA.
Justice Rehmat Hussain Jaffery observed that the KDA was required to make proper arrangements for the smooth flow of traffic and to make adequate arrangements to caution the traffic, which were not made and thus it grossly neglected its public duties which resulted in the accident. Besides, it was clear from the evidence that the NLC trailer was being driven very rashly and negligently.
The court observed that the principles of composite negligence were that the victim had a choice of proceeding against all or any one or more than one of the wrong-doers and “every wrong-doer is liable for the whole damages if it is otherwise made out.”