ISLAMABAD -  The Islamabad High Court Monday ordered the police to register a murder case against senior journalist Hamid Mir and Usman Punjabi for their alleged role in the murder of Khalid Khawaja, a former intelligence official.

IHC Judge Mohsin Akhtar Kayani issued the order on a petition of Shamama Malik, the widow of Khawaja. Shamama Malik had moved the court through her counsel, Sardar Tariq Fareed Gopang, nominating the additional district and sessions judge (west), IGP, SSP Islamabad police and SHO Ramna police station as respondents.

The petitioner had contended that she had submitted an application to the Islamabad IGP for the registration of a case against the accused, stating they abducted her husband from his house in Sector G-10/2 and murdered him.

She had contended the accused had committed a cognizable offence, but the IGP and the Ramna police station SHO were not performing their duty in accordance with the law.

The petitioner said, in response to her application to the additional district and sessions judge, the SHO had claimed he had received no application, on which she submitted another application to the IGP, but to no avail.

The petitioner again approached the additional district and sessions judge, but he dismissed her application on June 14, 2017. She termed the order of the additional sessions judge illegal and unlawful.

She prayed to the court to nullify the additional sessions judge’s order and direct the IGP and the SHO to record the statements of the accused under Section 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).

Earlier, the petitioner had filed an application to the Islamabad SSP, stating that on March 24, 2010, Hamid Mir and Usman Punjabi, in connivance with some accomplices, abducted her husband from her residence and took him to North Waziristan where he was murdered.

She said in the application the police even did not conduct postmortem of the body and the Ramna police did not record the version of their son correctly as the accused, Hamid Mir, was quite influential.

The petitioner said Hamid Mir had differences with her husband over the Lal Masjid operation as her husband was against the operation, so Mir used Usman Punjabi to murder her husband. She said an audio tape containing a conversation between Usman Punjabi and Hamid Mir also exists in the record of the Ramna police.