ISLAMABAD, June 24: The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a bail plea of a travel agent allegedly involved in human smuggling.

A two-member bench, comprising Justice Hamid Ali Mirza and Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi, however, asked the petitioner, Malik Bashiruddin, to approach the trial court afresh for bail on medical grounds.

The direction came when Maqbool Illahi Malik, the attorney of the travel agent, requested the court to grant bail on medical grounds because his client was a chronic patient of asthma and diabetes, and was also suffering from serious cardiac diseases.

Naheeda Mehboob Illahi, the federal standing counsel, however, contended before the court that the accused had a criminal record as he was involved in many such cases. Besides, the prosecution had 22 witnesses to prove the allegations against the accused.

Malik Bashiruddin, who is accused of sending people abroad on fake travelling documents, has been under custody since June 25, 2003. During the hearing, the counsel for the accused insisted that there was no evidence except the statements of three immigration officers to prove the involvement of his client in human smuggling.

He further contended that the FIR was lodged against his client on the basis of statements of the immigration officers. But, the people who were off-loaded from the Toronto-bound flight and had recorded confessional statements before these immigration officers later retracted from their statements by nominating a different person, Rana Saleem, as the main accused in the case.

Moreover, a damages suit filed by Bashiruddin against the immigration officers is also pending, he added. Three persons, Shahbaz Haider, Latif Ahmed and Ghulam Abbasi, were off-loaded by the Federal Investigation Agency from a Toronto-bound plane at the Lahore airport on May 27, 2003 for possessing fake travelling documents.

During investigation, they allegedly told the FIA that each of them paid Rs1.2 million to Rs1.5 million to Malik Bashiruddin to get the fake documents. They informed the investigators that they were given two passports each with instructions to destroy one soon after passing through immigration at the Lahore airport and present different passport to the Toronto immigration authorities in Canada.

The bail application of Bashiruddin was first rejected by the trial court and later by the Lahore High Court, which he challenged in the Supreme Court.