ISLAMABAD: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Saturday rejected the police’s request for 30-day physical remand of PTI leader and former Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister Khalid Khurshid and sent him to jail on judicial remand in connection with a case registered over the November 26 protest.
Judge Abul Hasnat Muhammad Zulqarnain heard the case against Khurshid. During the hearing, Islamabad police produced the PTI leader before the court and sought his physical remand for 30 days.
However, the court turned down the request and directed that he be sent to judicial custody.
A case was registered against Khurshid, the president of the PTI’s GB chapter, at Aabpara Police Station in connection with the party’s November 26 protest in 2024.
The protest saw more than 10,000 PTI protesters surge into Islamabad, defying a ban on public gatherings and a lockdown to skirmish with 20,000 security forces enlisted to turn them back.
A day of clashes between security forces and protesters in the city’s Red Zone had ended in the PTI leadership’s hasty retreat, with the party announcing that it was calling off its planned protest sit-in “for the time being”. Subsequently, cases were registered against several PTI leaders under various sections of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
Khurshid was arrested along with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati and several others at the speaker’s house in Peshawar, according to the PTI, shortly after the Centre imposed emergency and governor’s rule in KP on Oct 11.
Sources said Khurshid had been staying at the KP chief minister’s residence since 2023 to avoid arrest by GB police.
PTI workers discharged
In a separate development, the court also discharged PTI workers arrested in connection with two cases linked to the party’s recent long march after rejecting a request by the investigating officer for an adjournment to conduct their identification parade.
During proceedings concerning the PTI workers arrested in two cases registered at Shalimar and Secretariat police stations, the investigating officer requested an adjournment to conduct an identification parade.
However, the defence counsel opposed the request, arguing that the workers had already spent more than 40 days in custody and that the police had repeatedly sought adjournments without producing them before the court.
The lawyers maintained that the accused were innocent and had been deliberately implicated in the cases, alleging that the police arbitrarily arrested individuals and falsely portrayed them as PTI workers.
The defence counsel reiterated their earlier plea for the discharge of the accused and urged the court to implement its order passed at the previous hearing.
Accepting the defence’s arguments, the court ordered the discharge of all the PTI workers from the cases.
The workers had been placed in judicial custody for the purpose of an identification parade in connection with the cases registered at Shalimar and Secretariat police stations.