LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Thursday sought arguments on maintainability of a petition challenging the constitution of a new Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to hold a fresh probe into 2014 Model Town firing incident.

A police inspector facing trial in the Model Town incident assailed the new JIT, pleading that fresh investigation could not be held after the indictment of suspects in a case.

Petitioner’s counsel Burhan Moazam Malik argued that both the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Anti Terrorism Act 1997 did not allow formation of second JIT in the same case. He pointed out that the trial in the Model Town case was at its final stage as 86 out of 135 witnesses had testified before the trial court.

The counsel said a judicial inquiry and a JIT had already investigated the 2014 firing incident. He said the Supreme Court in its decision had not ordered the constitution of the new JIT but the Punjab government itself agreed to hold fresh investigation into the case.

He asked the court to declare illegal the government’s act of establishing the new JIT for being in violation of the existing laws.

A division bench headed by Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan asked the counsel to come up with further arguments and also apprise the court of the jurisdiction of the high court to inspect directives of the Supreme Court.

The bench will resume hearing on Jan 30.

The Punjab home department on Jan 3 formed the JIT for conducting a fresh probe into the Model Town incident.

Earlier, the apex court on Dec 5, 2018, disposed of a petition by Model Town incident’s affectees after the government undertook to form a new JIT to probe the case. The new JIT resumed its proceedings and summoned former provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2019