KARACHI, Sept 26: The chairman of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (Haqiqi), Afaq Ahmed, was granted bail on Monday by the Sindh High Court in the last of the cases against him.

The case pertained to an armed attack on the workers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement that left one of them dead and two others wounded within the remit of the Nabi Bakhsh police station in June 2009.

A bench comprising Justice Tasneem Ahmed gave Mr Ahmed, who has been in jail since April 2004, bail in the sum of Rs1 million and ordered his release if the applicant’s custody was not required in any other criminal case.

The MQM-H chief, represented by Advocate Ilyas Khan, had moved the high court seeking quashment of proceedings of the murder case against him.

He submitted that he had been in jail since April 2004 and was booked in a number of new cases as an abettor over the last couple of years at the behest of the rival Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

His counsel contended that the fresh cases registered against the interned political leader on political grounds had no evidence, adding that the petitioner had only been put on trial in a case registered against him at the Nabi Bakhsh police station in which the trial court had dismissed his bail and acquittal applications.

He said that the prosecution had no solid evidence to link him with this case, which was registered in June 2009 when he was in prison. He, therefore, prayed for the quashment of the case.

Complainant Shahzad lodged an FIR (222/09) under Sections 302 (premeditated murder), 324 (attempted murder), 109 (punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence and where no express provision is made for its punishment) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code at the Nabi Bakhsh police station.

He stated in the FIR that some workers of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement had killed his brother Atiq-ur-Rehman and wounded him in June 2009 at the behest of Afaq Ahmed.

The bench directed the defence counsel to move the application for his acquittal in the trial court if the statements of three material witnesses for the prosecution were recorded by the court. It also directed the trial court to decide the case against Mr Ahmed within two months and report the progress to the high court fortnightly.

The court order said that the reason for granting bail to the Haqiqi chief would be recorded later.

Death sentence of three LJ men set asideAn appellant bench of the SHC, headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed, set aside the capital punishment awarded to three alleged workers of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a proscribed sectarian outfit, by an anti-terrorism court in 2006 in a case pertaining to the killing of nine people during an attack on Muntazir Al-Mahdi Imambargah within the remit of the Al-Falah police station.

The bench exonerated the three appellants — Abdul Wahab Afghani, Shahnawaz and Shaukat — from all charges while giving them the benefit of the doubt.

The LJ men, represented by Advocate Mushtaq Ahmed, were sentenced to death by the ATC-2 on Aug 21, 2006 for their involvement in the attack on Feb 22, 2003.

The defence counsel contended that the recovery allegedly made from the defendants was doubtful, while the identification parade of Wahab Afghani was not conducted in accordance with law.