LAHORE: A counsel for the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) on Saturday cross-examined six defence witnesses during the hearing of its private complaint for the trial of police officials in the 2014 Model Town firing incident case.

The PAT’s attorney Makhdoom Majeed Hussain Shah conducted the cross-examination of the witnesses, namely Khwaja Sohail, Waqas Ahmed Qureshi, Malik Saleem, Yasmin Mukhtar Ahmed, Ghulam Shabbir and Imran Hussain.

All the witnesses are the residents of Model Town near the secretariat of Idara Minhajul Quran, a subsidiary of PAT. They said the PAT workers fired from the rooftops and threw petrol bombs on officials of the police and the district administration who ran to save their lives. They said the police fired teargas at the PAT workers but did not open fire at them. They said the police were removing the barricades on the roads placed by the PAT workers.

Judge Arshad Javed adjourned the hearing till next week after the PAT’s counsel completed the cross-examination. So far, 104 witnesses have recorded their testimonies in the case.

At least 10 people were killed and around 100 were injured during an ‘anti-encroachment’ operation outside the Model Town residence of PAT chief Dr Tahirul Qadri on June 17, 2014.

The Idara Minhajul Quran had filed the private complaint before the ATC against the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the then CM Shehbaz Sharif and almost all federal and provincial cabinets of the PML-N besides officials of police and district administration, accusing them of killing its workers. However, the trial court in 2017 dismissed the complaint to the extent of political personalities and started trial proceedings against the officials of police and district administration nominated as accused by the complainant.

The previous government in Punjab, led by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, had constituted a new joint investigation team (JIT) to reinvestigate the incident. However, several accused police officials challenged the JIT before the LHC and got it stayed in 2019.

Former inspector general Mushtaq Sukhera, former DIG operations Rana Abdul Jabbar, former commissioner retired Capt Muhammad Usman and two other accused persons have been acquitted in the trial.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2024