ISLAMABAD
An anti-terrorism court in Islamabad has granted two-day physical remand of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Ali Amin Gandapur. Judicial Magistrate Ehtisham Alam on Tuesday announced the verdict on the petition filed by police seeking the physical remand of the PTI leader.
After the court order, Gandapur was handed over to police custody. During proceedings today, Gandapur’s lawyer Babar Awan told the court that the case against his client was registered after six months on the basis of an old audio clip run on a private TV channel.
He said that physical remand was being demanded by the police on the basis of voice matching. He suggested to the court to match his client’s voice in court and don’t remand him to police custody.
However, the prosecutor contended that they not only wanted to match his voice, rather they also wanted to recover weapons from the accused. Earlier, police quashed the terrorism sections from the case registered against Gandapur.
Gandapur, a former federal minister, was arrested from outside the Peshawar High Court’s D.I. Khan bench on Thursday and sent to the central jail on a six-day judicial remand. On April 8, a case was registered against the PTI leader at Islamabad’s Golra police station under section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).
The first information report (FIR) also invoked sections 120B (punishment of criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan), 121A (conspiracy to commit offences punishable by Section 121), 122 (collecting arms, etc., with intention of waging war against Pakistan), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Pakistan Penal Code and section 16 of Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) ordinance.
