ISLAMABAD, Jan 8: Chief Justice of Islamabad High Court Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman on Tuesday granted bail to a man arrested for driving a private car with a fake green number plate.
Ishtiaq Ahmed was arrested by the Industrial Area police while driving the car with green number plate on November 22, 2012.
When the police asked him to produce any document to justify the use of the government number plate on his private car, Ahmed showed them an appointment letter issued by a non-governmental organisation - National Peace Committee for Inter-Religion (NPCIR) Pakistan.
The letter was about the appointment of Ahmed’s father Mushtaq Ahmed as the NPCIR chairman for the Narowal district.
During the hearing, Wusaatul Hassan Shah, the counsel for the arrested man, told the court that his client was a driver and not the owner of the car.
He contended that the car was neither found stolen nor tampered with by the police and there was no solid evidence against his client.
However, Deputy Attorney General Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri opposed the grant of bail. He said Ahmed in his application filed with the sessions court had admitted the ownership of the car. He alleged that the accused had been using the green number plate in order to befool people and extort money from them.
Mr Jahangiri told Dawn that the green number plate can only be placed on vehicles owned and registered in the name of the government of Pakistan.
He said people used fake green number plates for smuggling and fraudulent activities.
The punishment for using a fake green number plate is up to 10 years imprisonment, he added.
The IHC chief justice observed that Ahmed was not the owner of the car nor did the police establish that he had placed the green number plate on the car.
He accepted the bail plea of the man against a surety of Rs0.2 million.
It may be recalled that on December 13, Additional District and Sessions Judge Raja Khurram Ali Khan had also accepted the bail plea of Mohammad Saddique who was caught by the police while using a fake green number plate and a revolving light on his private car.
Saddique was arrested by the Industrial Area police on November 23 after he failed to justify placing the green number plate and revolving light on his car.
In order to avoid his arrest, he produced before the police a letter issued by a cleric Allama Zahir Hashmi who was running an NGO in Azad Kashmir.
The letter, which bore the signature and stamp of the cleric, allowed Saddique to use ‘protocol’ for his car. Saddique adopted before the court that he treated the letter of the cleric as a permit and placed the green number plate and revolving light on his car.
When the ADSJ asked the police whether they had tried to arrest the cleric for issuing such a letter, the reply came in the negative.
While directing the police to further probe the matter, the court accepted the bail plea of the man.
When contacted, Farzana Bari, a civic society activist, told Dawn that during the last a few years the number of NGOs in the country had increased manifold. She said a large number of NGOs were operating without any registration and proper agenda.
The mushroom growth of NGOs needs proper monitoring and scrutiny because the unregulated organisations are posing threats to the national security, she pointed out.