ISLAMABAD: A district and sessions court in Islamabad on Tuesday remanded in custody for two Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Ali Amin Gandapur in a case filed against him for allegedly threatening government officials and institutions with dire consequences.
Judicial Magistrate Ehtsham Alam Khan announced the reserved verdict and handed Gandapur over to the Golra Sharif Police.
The former federal minister was picked up from outside the Peshawar High Court’s Dera Ismail Khan bench on Thursday and sent on a six-day judicial remand. The officials of the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) reached the local court to arrest Gandapur, but the PTI leader would be arrested after his discharge from the case at Golra Police Station.
Gandapur is currently under custody in a case registered at Golra Police Station.
The police requested a 10 days remand of the PTI leader but the court granted two days remand.
Earlier, Gandapur was produced before the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) after a one-day physical remand. The hearing started in the court of ATC Judge Raja Jawad Abbas.
The ATC judge informed the defendant that terrorism provisions had been deleted from the case. The judge also asked Gandapur if he was subjected to any physical harm during police custody. To which, the PTI leader said no he was not.
The judge said the accused could be presented before the relevant court after the removal of the terrorism provisions.
As soon as the judge said this, a junior lawyer representing Gandapur requested the court to wait for Advocate Babar Awan, who was expected shortly, to join the court proceedings.
To this, the judge said: “Do you want the terrorism provisions not to be removed?”
“We want to argue why the time of the court was wasted by adding terrorism provisions in the first place,” the assistant lawyer said. To this the ATC judge Abbas allowed the parties to speak for another ten minutes.
Later Pervez Khattak, Asad Qaisar, and Babar Awan reached the courtroom.
During his arguments, Awan told the court that the investigating officer wasted the court’s time yesterday. “The investigating officer also wasted the time of the lawyers and humiliated the accused,” Awan added.
He further said that the private channel was not a plaintiff against Gandapur.
“A show-cause notice should be issued to the investigating officer for wasting the court’s time,” said Awan.
After 6 months, the magistrate registered a case based on lies, Awan said asking why the plaintiff took six months to file the case. “Was the plaintiff sleeping for six months,” Awan added.
Later, Gandapur was produced in the court of Judicial Magistrate Ehtisham Alam. During the hearing, Awan argued that the case was registered on the complaint of the Magistrate six months after hearing Gandapur’s voice on the TV channel.
“The prosecution wants to [forensically] match [identify] Gandapur’s voice [with the voice in the leaked audio purported to be of the former federal minister talking to another man, who remains nameless to date],” Advocate Awan said.
“Let’s do Gandapur’s voice-matching [recognition] in the court room.”
He said it was not one of those times when voice recognition was a difficult thing to do. “Technology has advanced and audio-editing [faking the voice using sound software) is not a problem anymore.”
Awan said the police first presented my client in ATC, [when it did not work] they removed the terrorism provisions [to send him to this court] out of malice. Upon which, the judge asked the prosecution why did they not perform the voice recognition tests on the day Gandapur was remanded to them.
The prosecution lawyer said they could not get it done because they were yet to receive the record [copy] of the audio from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) — as was the standard practice.
“We need to get the voice identification done by the FIA (Federal Investigation Agency). One-day physical remand was granted for voice matching, what is the progress? The Judge questioned.
The recording has been sought from Pemra, which is the procedure, the prosecutor said
“How many guns, how many men were there, what does this mean?” the prosecutor questioned and then answered, “The meaning is obvious.”
“What did you do in that you got a day’s physical remand?” the court asked. To which the prosecution replied they not only had to get the voice identification done but also recover guns [being discussed in the voice note].
After hearing the arguments of both parties, the court reserved its decision.
