PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Friday granted bail to imprisoned MNA and Pashtun Tahafuz Movement leader Ali Wazir in a sedition case registered in Charsadda district.

It also stopped the provincial police from arresting the lawmaker in other cases.

The orders were issued by two benches after hearing separate petitions of Mr Wazir, who has been behind bars since Dec 16.

Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim of a single-member bench granted bail to Mr Wazir in a sedition case registered at Charsadda’s Prang police station on March 2, 2020, after he addressed a public meeting by the PTM in the district.

The bench accepted the lawmaker’s bail plea on condition of furnishing two surety bonds of Rs500,000 each.

Stops police from arresting him in other cases

The other bench consisting of Justice Attique Shah and Justice Syed Arshad Ali stopped the police from arresting the petitioner in any of the cases registered against him in the province.

It fixed Feb 13 for the next hearing into the petition and sought response of the provincial home secretary and the police about it.

In the petition, Mr Wazir had requested a bench to order the quashing of around 11 FIRs registered against him in different districts as well as those not disclosed by the government and police.

Senior lawyer Sher Afzal Khan Marwat appeared for the petitioner in both cases.

The petitioner was arrested in Peshawar on Dec 16, 2020, by the local police at the request of Sindh police in connection with an FIR registered against him and other leaders of PTM at Sohrab Goth police station, Karachi. Multiple charges were leveled against them.

The police claimed the lawmaker’s arrest in three other cases registered by the Karachi police. He is currently kept at Karachi’s Central Prison.

After Mr Wazir was acquitted by a Karachi anti-terrorism court in the first case and was granted bail in the three other cases, his arrest was “shown” in the FIR registered at the Prang police station.

A team of Charsadda police visited the Karachi prison last month to interrogate Mr Wazir in the case. It obtained permission from the judges of Karachi’s two ATCs to arrest and interrogate him over the FIR.

The courts, however, declared that the police won’t shift the detainee from the prison to Charsadda until the cases pending with them were concluded.

The FIR was registered against him under Sections 120 (concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment), 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups, etc), 121 (waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan), 121-A (conspiracy to commit offences punishable by Section 121) and 124-A (sedition) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 5 of the Loudspeaker Act.

Advocate Sher Afzal Marwat contended that the complainant in the FIR was the SHO of the Prang police station.

He contended that the police had registered a concocted case against Mr Wazir.

The lawyer said even on statutory grounds, Mr Wazir was entitled to bail under Section 497 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as he had been behind bars for over two years but the trial in the case hadn’t started yet.

In the petition filed for the quashing of cases against the petitioner, Mr Marwat contended that the charges against the petitioner in those cases were almost identical, including sedition, waging of war against the state, and spreading hatred in national institutions.

He pointed out that the police showed the arrest of his client in different cases just to block his release.

The lawmaker said while the petitioner was granted bail in Karachi cases, he had to stay behind bars due to the FIRs registered by the KP police.

He complained that the provincial government and police hadn’t disclosed the exact number of cases registered against the petitioner in the province.

Mr Marwat referred to superior court judgements and contended that separate cases couldn’t be registered against one individual on identical charges. He requested the court to stop the police from showing his client’s arrest in the cases in question as well as thosenot disclosed publicly.

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2023