PESHAWAR: An anti-terrorism court on Friday granted bail to two people arrested by the counter-terrorism department on the charge of harbouring suspected terrorists.

It accepted the bail pleas of Abdul Haq and Zahirullah on condition of furnishing two surety bonds of Rs100,000 each.

The CTD Peshawar police station had registered separate FIRs against the two on Sept 1 under Section 21-J of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, which deals with the harbouring of a criminal.

The CTD said it had learned about the presence of absconder Subhanullah at the residence of Zahirullah in Duranpur area of Peshawar and when the house was raided, the absconder wasn’t found, so it arrested the petitioner, who was his brother.

About the other case, it said it had reports about the presence of absconder Bad Khan at the residence of petitioner Abdul Haq in Mulagori area but the absconder was not present during the raid, so the petitioner was taken into custody.

Advocate Shabbir Hussain Gigyani appeared for the petitioners and contended that his clients were charged in concocted cases.

He contended that during last couple of days the CTD had registered identical fake cases against dozens of persons charging them of harbouring suspects under the ATA.

He pointed out that one thing common in these cases was that most of the persons charged for harbouring suspected terrorists were those who had been acquitted in different cases of terrorism during last couple of years by the anti-terrorism courts or the Peshawar High Court.

The counsel claimed that as CTD had the data of all those acquitted persons, it had adopted a novel way of registering concocted cases by charging those persons for harbouring suspected terrorists.

He added that in the ‘so-called’ raids, the absconders weren’t arrested and instead persons earlier acquitted were implicated in fake cases.

Mr Gigyani contended that one of his clients worked in a marble factory and was taken away from there, but he was shown to be arrested in his house.

He added that the owner of the marble factory and other workers had testified about his arrest in the factory.

The lawyer said petitioner Zahirullah had already told the investigating officer that his brother, Subhanullah, had been missing for the last many years and the family had been searching for him.

He contended that the number of cases registered under Section 21-J of the ATA had increased manifold during the last couple of days and that, too, against the people already acquitted by different courts.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2021