HYDERABAD, June 14: Anti-Terrorism Court judge Syed Ali Ashraf Shah here on Tuesday remanded People’s Party Parliamentarians MPA Zahid Ali Bhurgari in police custody for seven days in a bomb explosion case. Mr Bhurgari was produced in the court under strict security arrangements. The court directed police to produce him on June 21 again.

Police claimed that the MPA had been arrested on Monday morning in the jurisdiction of the Amri police station and that his three accomplices had escaped in a car.

Mr Bhurgari’s counsel Allah Bachayo Soomro filed an application in the court, praying the court to allow him to attend the current budget session of the Sindh Assembly. He maintained that under Sindh Assembly rules, an MPA could not be arrested without permission of the PA Speaker. He referred to a letter sent to the speaker by the Jamshoro DPO, informing about the MPA’s arrest.

The court fixed the application for hearing on June 15 and issued a notice to the special public prosecutor.

Mr Bhurgari was shown arrested on Monday in two successive bomb explosions on transmission lines of Wapda in the Jamshoro district on Sunday. The DPO wrote a letter in this regard to the Sindh Assembly speaker containing details of how he was arrested and his three accomplices managed to escape from the scene. “The MPA gave his incomplete name to a police picket of the Amri police station when he was caught,” the DPO said. “He was arrested while trying to flee from the scene,” the DPO claimed.

Two explosions had occurred at electricity towers of the Dadu-Jamshoro high transmission line near the Sann railway station on Sunday.

On Monday, sessions court official Tariq Hashmani had raided the A-section police station for recovery of the MPA but had not found him.

The raid had been conducted on a habeas corpus application filed by Mohammad Ali Bhurgari, a brother of the MPA, seeking recovery of his brother.

The SHO told the court official that no case was registered against the MPA at the police station and claimed that the A-section had not arrested him.

Mr Bhurgari had been picked up on Sunday by a team of the Latifabad A-section police when he had come out of a labour convention, also addressed by the leader of the opposition in the senate, Raza Rabbani.

Local party leaders Amanullah Siyal, Iqbal Soomro and others had asked police to produce arrest warrants but police had failed to do so and taken away the MPA. Later, police authorities shifted him to Dadu and showed him arrested in the bomb blast case.

PROTEST: Activists of the People’s Party Parliamentarians and the People’s Students Federation held separate demonstrations outside the press club here on Tuesday, condemning the arrest of city chapter party president MPA Zahid Ali Bhurgari.

Local party leaders, including Syed Saleem Shah Bukhari, Zahid Ali Shah, Roshan Solangi, Ghulam Rasool Memon, Ibrar Qureshi and Ghulam Rasool Kalhoro, were present on the occasion.

They said the Sindh government stood exposed after the registration of what they called a false case against the MPA. They described it an undemocratic act of the government. They said the government had adopted third degree tactics against its opponents. They said the MPA had strongly protested during the budget session of the Sindh Assembly and had covered eyes of the finance minister with a black piece of cloth for which he was being punished.

PSF leaders Mukhtiar Baloch, Mohammad Urs Solangi and Zubair Ahmad Hingoro at a protest rally also criticized the arrest of Mr Bhurgari.

They demanded release of the MPA.