PESHAWAR: A local court on Tuesday grated interim pre-arrest bail to provincial president of Pakistan Peoples Party Mohammad Ali Shah Bacha and two other leaders charged for vandalising and setting on fire a protest camp of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf near Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly a day earlier.

The additional sessions judge, Asmatullah Wazir, sought record of the case and fixed June 15 for next hearing.

The three petitioners, Mohammad Ali Shah Bacha, former provincial minister Ziaullah Afridi and another leader Shah Zulqarnain, claimed that they were innocent and were falsely named in the FIR registered on May 26 at East Cant police station by an activist of their rival party PTI.

Senior lawyers Gohar Rehman Khattak, Lajbar Khan Khalil and Shakil Ahmad Gillani appeared for the petitioners and stated that their clients were political workers and attached with PPP for the last many years.

They said that on May 26, PPP had organised a rally against massive corruption by the provincial government of PTI. They said that although protesters were peaceful and were raising slogans for the acceptance of their demands, local police at the behest of provincial government resorted to brutal baton charge and tear gas shelling against them.

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They stated that several of PPP workers and leaders received injuries and were rushed to a nearby hospital. Later on, they stated, they came to know that a fabricated FIR had been registered against them.

They argued that the petitioners were respectable citizens and they deserved to be granted pre-arrest bail.

It is pertinent to mention that the FIR was registered on complaint of a PTI member Engineer Arif Khan, who stated that for the last 90 days they had established a camp for the release of PTI incarcerated founder Imran Khan.

The complainant stated that his party had organised protests in the province against drone strikes killing innocent people, and he along with other workers had gone to Hasthnagri area to participate in that protest.

He stated that in the protest, he received information that some miscreants had attacked the camp and set it on fire. He added when he reached there he saw that the tents were still on fire whereas the miscreants had left the scene.

The complainant claimed that in the video footages of the occurrence, the faces of suspects were visible. He claimed that the miscreants had put their camp on fire at the behest of provincial president and general secretary of PPP.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2025