IO told to produce prosecution witnesses in shrine attack case.

Byline: Naeem Sahoutara

KARACHI -- An antiterrorism court has directed the investigating officers to produce nine prosecution witnesses to record their testimonies against two detained alleged Islamic State-inspired facilitators in a suicide attack on the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan.

The counter-terrorism department claimed to have detained Nadir Ali, alias Murshid, and Furqan, alias Farooq alias Azam, allegedly affiliated with the militant Islamic State group (also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh) over facilitating the deadly bomb blast.

Around 80 people were killed and over 350 others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the packed-to-capacity courtyard of the shrine of the Sufi saint in February 2017.

As the matter came up before the ATC-XVI judge both the accused Ali and Furqan were produced from the prison.

The investigating officers, Imtiaz Ali and Sohail Ahmed, produced a prosecution witness to record his statement.

The witness, Sarmad Raza, deposed that he was posted as a judicial magistrate when the then district and sessions' judge of Jamshoro assigned him to record statements of witnesses under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

He also produced copies of the statements of the witnesses along with their affidavits and other relevant documents.

The court recorded the testimony of another witness, medico-legal officer Dr Ghulam Rasool, who also produced the post-mortem reports and other relevant documents.

Another witness, Assistant Sub-InsApector Abdul Ghafoor also recorded his statement. The prosecutor gave up two witnesses, ASI Ghulam Hyder and Inspector Abdul Nabi.

The court bound nine more witnesses - including Inspector Ali Hyder, SI Raja Azmat, constables Shoukat and PC Umar, SI Lutuffulah, ASI Muhammad Usman, SI Ali Sher, Pervaiz Ahmed and Muhammad Ramzan to appear on the next date to record their statements in the present case.

The judge fixed the matter for Oct 31, directing the IOs to produce these witnesses on next date of hearing along with case property.

In March, the Hyderabad CTD filed a supplementary charge sheet...