KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has ordered the withdrawal of administrative powers from the presiding judge of the anti-terrorism court (ATC) I, who had refused to grant the physical remand of Armaghan, the prime suspect in the Mustafa Amir murder case.
A two-member bench, headed by Justice Zafar Rajput, issued a detailed verdict on the matter.
According to the acting prosecutor general, the decision to strip the judge of his powers was made following allegations of record tampering.
The prosecution had filed four petitions against the ATC judge, arguing that he had rejected the request for the suspect’s physical remand at the initial level.
During the previous hearing, the ATC registrar submitted the case record to the SHC, and the current investigating officer informed the court that while police remand had initially been granted, the suspect was later sent to jail custody at 7pm earlier this month.
Justice Zafar observed that a physical remand had been altered to jail custody by striking out the original order.
Close Modal Dialog
The SHC then ordered that the suspect be presented before the ATC again, after which the court handed him over to police on a four-day remand.
It may be noted that Armaghan had been arrested on February 8, during a raid at his residence in Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA), by the police’s Anti-Violent Crime Cell.
The encounter, which was a gunfight between the law enforcers and the suspect, highlighted the case of disappearance and murder of Mustafa, a BBA student, who had gone missing on January 6.
Besides Armaghan, another suspect named Sheraz alias Shavez, was also arrested during the raid.
After the arrests, the police presented both the suspects before the ATC I to seek their physical remand for interrogation. However, the court denied the police custody of the prime suspect, but remanded Sheraz into their custody.
The police then approached the SHC for Armaghan’s custody, which referred the matter to ATC II for physical remand. Both the suspects are still in police custody following successive extension of their remands.
The case
The case is linked to the alleged kidnapping and murder of a BBA student, Mustafa, who had gone missing last month.
The police arrested the suspects during the February 8 raid, however, Mustafa’s whereabouts couldn’t be traced until a week later when the authorities revealed that some charred human remains had been found in a car near the Hub checkpost days after the youngster’s disappearance.
The victim’s body had been buried by the Edhi Foundation following the discovery in January, but a court allowed its exhumation for identification and forensics. The initial report that surfaced earlier this week confirmed that the exhumed body was indeed Mustafa’s.
Both the suspects had, on different occasions, confessed to murdering the youngster and disposing off his body at the same place from where the burnt car and remains had been discovered.
 has ordered the withdrawal of administrative powers from the presiding judge of the anti-terrorism){kind=link}