by Naeem Sahoutara in Dawn, November 19th, 2020
KARACHI: A judicial magistrate on Wednesday quashed a case against Pakistan Muslim League-N leader retired Captain Mohammad Safdar pertaining to alleged violation of the sanctity of the mausoleum of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
The court rejected the final investigation report filed by the investigating officer of the case, Inspector Mohammad Yousuf Narejo, seeking disposal of the case in ‘B-class’ and seeking action against the complainant for lodging a false case.
The judge also threw out an application filed by the federal government against the Sindh police’s move to declare the case as ‘false’ and pleading to the court to order action against Capt Safdar.
Capt Safdar, who is the husband of PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz, was taken into custody by police on the morning of Oct 19 from a hotel where the couple was staying during their visit to Karachi for the opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement’s public gathering held in the city a day earlier. Hours later, he was granted bail by a magistrate’s court against a surety of Rs100,000.
The Pakistan Peoples Party-led Sindh government had alleged that the federal government had forced the provincial police to carry out the arrest in a bid to create a rift in the PDM, the 11-party anti-government alliance which has the PPP and PML-N at its forefront.
On Wednesday, Judicial Magistrate (South) Wazeer Hussain Memon pronounced his verdict reserved earlier after hearing arguments from all sides.
The judge concluded that the recommendation of the police for disposal of the FIR under ‘B-class’ was not reasonable and justified as no other sufficient evidence was available on record to term the FIR as “maliciously false” and to initiate the proceedings against the complainant as provided under the law.
“Therefore, I hereby decline to concur with the recommendation of the police and order to cancel the FIR under the “C” class in the manner provided under the law,” the judge ruled.
The court cancelled post-arrest bail granted to Capt Safdar and discharged the surety.
He noted that neither complainant Waqas Khan seemed to be present at the place of the incident nor his witnesses named in the FIR were present at the mausoleum.
“Furthermore, nothing has come on the record to the extent of what actual loss in amount was caused to the government properties in the incident. Moreover, the Section 506-B of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) also does not attract under the circumstances and the story narrated in the FIR by the complainant as well as from the statements of the witnesses recorded before the police under the Section 161 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC),” the order said.
The judge noted that the version of the complainant and evidence collected during the course of the investigation reflected that the main ingredients of Sections 6, 8 and 10 of Quaid-i-Azam Mazar Protection and Maintenance Ordinance, 1971 were not enough to prosecute even a single accused for the alleged offence.
“From above discussion, it transpires that not any iota of evidence has come on record to support the version of the complainant, thereby cutting down the roots of prosecution case at its inception and has made it incapable of prosecuting/supporting conviction of any of the accused persons,” the judge stated in the order.
“Therefore, in such situation it is crystal clear that the evidences, which have come on the record, would not finally result into the conviction of either party and further proceedings would not bring fruitful results, but would be an abuse of the process of the law, which is unwarranted in any circumstances,” the order stated.
According to the FIR, Safdar, Maryam and a cohort of their supporters violated the sanctity of the Quaid’s mausoleum by creating a ruckus and chanting fiery political slogans inside. They were also accused of intimidating people.
Defence counsel — Advocates K.K. Javed Khan, Ali Zaman Khan, Meer Mohammad Rafique and Ali Asghar Narejo — denied the allegations on behalf of the PML-N leader and alleged that the case was politically motivated and pleaded to the court to quash the same. www.dawn.com/news/1591163/magistrate-quashes-violation-of-quaids-mazar-sanctity-case-against-safdar
