LAHORE: On Thursday, a court against terrorism granted post-arrest bail to 39 PTI activists who were accused of storming Jinnah House, the home of the Lahore corps commander, during the May 9 riots.
Judge Arshad Javed granted the activists’ bail requests, provided that they provide a bond worth Rs. 100,000.
Shan Ali, Nadir Mahmood, Awais Ali, Yar Gul, Waqar Jamil, Zeeshan Butt, Kashif Khan, Awn Abbas, Naqeeb Ahmad, Riaz Ahmad, and Tasawur Hussain are among those who have been granted bail.
The activists’ attorneys primarily contended that their clients had not broken any laws.
They said that no evidence had been presented by the police to support any charges against the petitioners. They claimed the inquiry instead demonstrated that the petitioners were compliant participants in a political demonstration.
According to the petitioner’s attorney, the police accused the petitioners in general without identifying any particular role for them.
They further contended that the petitioners were not named in the FIR and that the police had implicated them later on without holding a suspect identification parade.
They argued that as several defendants with comparable positions had previously been freed on bond, these petitioners were equally subject to the norm of consistency.
On May 9, following the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan in an Islamabad High Court fraud case by the NAB, violent protests broke out. Sarwar Road police had filed FIR No. 96 against PTI officials and workers on charges of damaging and vandalizing the Jinnah House.
In the past two months, various trial courts have granted bail to more than 200 PTI activists, both male and female, in connection with the Jinnah House attack.
A number of offenses were added to the FIR in addition to the terrorism accusations under Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
