official in court

By Our Reporter

RAWALPINDI, Feb 17: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday directed police to produce a former superintendent of Adiala Jail in the court as he is facing contempt charges.

The former jail official allegedly gave unlawful remissions to two men convicted in an attempted murder case in 1997.

Giving orders in a petition filed by the brother of the victim, Justice Kazim Ali Malik directed the SHO of Airport to make sure that Chaudhry Afzal the former superintendent of the jail was present in the court on the next date of hearing.

Saeed Yousaf Khan, the lawyer of the petitioner Amir Fida Paracha told Dawn that Wajahat and Shehryar were convicted in 1997 of attempting to kill Anjum Fida Paracha the brother of the petitioner in 1994. The trial court awarded 10-year imprisonment to the convicts whose appeal was rejected by the LHC. The Supreme Court only maintained the sentence but increased the imprisonment period from 10 to 13 years.

Making Punjab home department and Superintendent of the jail as respondents, the petitioner moved the court against any remission to the accused in 2000.

The petitioner had maintained that there were three kinds of remissions given by the President of Pakistan, by the provincial government and the jail superintendent but not without the permission of the aggrieved party.

The LHC observed that only President could give remission under the constitution and other remissions were subject to the approval of the aggrieved party.

The petitioner in his petition said the remission awarded by the jail superintendent resulted in the release of two convicts in four years.

Separately the court disposed of a writ petition of a Kashmiri migrant seeking release of his teenage nephew who was detained after he entered in to Azad Kashmir from Indian side last September.

The court disposed of the petition of Wali-ur-Rehman after standing counsel representing federal government said that the government had initiated the process of shifting the detained the nineteen-year-old Riaz Khan to a camp in the AJK.