PESHAWAR, March 13: The Peshawar High Court on Monday granted bail to 44 people arrested in connection with last month’s during protests against the publication of blasphemous cartoons in some European newspapers.

A single-judge bench of Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan ordered that the petitioners should furnish two sureties of Rs50,000 each.

The bench observed that sentiments of Muslims across the world were hurt to the publication of the blasphemous cartoons and protest demonstrations were held throughout the world and not only in Peshawar.

The bench observed that some miscreants had joined the protest demonstrations and were involved in damaging public property. It said that it could not be ascertained during by the trial court whether the petitioners were involved in the riots.

The court said that the petitioners deserved to be released on bail.

Earlier, an Anti-Terrorism Court had dismissed the bail applications of all petitioners.

The petitioners have been charged in different FIRs registered in various police stations after the Feb 15 violence during which different properties were set on fire and damaged across the city, including buses and coaches of the Daewoo Company, offices of Telenor Telecommunication Company, a KFC restaurant and buildings of different banks and departmental stores.

Various lawyers appeared for the petitioners and contended that the petitioners were innocent and were not arrested from the spot.

Advocate Khursheed Ahmad Shahan argued that to hide its failure the local police had arrested innocent people, including a large number of juveniles.

He argued that the police had alleged that the miscreants were involved in firing and were making announcements for instigating other persons to violence, but the police had not recovered any weapons from any of the arrested persons, which proved that the petitioners were innocent.