RAWALPINDI The Rawalpindi Bench of Lahore High Court reserved its judgment on Wednesday on a petition seeking registration of a second FIR in Ms Benazair Bhutto's assassination case against former President Pervez Musharraf and others. Justice Asad Munir withheld the judgment on a point of maintainability of the petition filed by Advocate Muhammad Aslam Chaudhry after hearing arguments from both sides.
Muhammad Asad Rajpoot, the petitioner's lawyer, had maintained that a second FIR should be registered against former president Pervez Musharraf, former Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Ilahi, the then director general of Intelligence Bureau Ijaz Ahmed, Interior Minster Rehman A. Malik, Law Minister Babar Awan, former interior minister Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz, former spokesman for interior ministry Javaid Iqbal Cheema and former CPO, DCO and other police officers.
Advocate Rajpoot said there were many examples where a second or a third FIR had been registered on courts' orders and said that in Murtaza Bhutto's murder case three different cases had been registered.
Responding to arguments about the time lapsed since the assassination, the counsel said that the Balochistan High Court had ordered registration of an FIR against Musharraf in Akbar Bugti's case two years after his murder in August 2006.
When asked how would Chaudhry Aslam be aggrieved if a second case was not registered, Advocate Rajpoot said his client had been injured in a suicide attack and his plea to register a separate case had been turned down by an additional district and sessions judge, adding that the Rawalpindi police had kept the FIR lodged on the complaint of City Police Station SHO sealed for many months.
Opposing the plea for registration of a second FIR, lawyers representing different respondents said that only blood relatives of a deceased could get a second case registered and if the petitioner was allowed to get an FIR lodged then many other people claiming to be PPP supporters would seek registration of separate FIRs.