Islamabad - A local court Monday exonerated Lal Masjid cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz from the charges of issuing life threats to representatives of civil society.
A Judicial Magistrate Muhammad Naseer-ud-Din announced his verdict reserved earlier on the petition of Lal Masjid cleric to quash the FIR, as police had already declared him innocent in its investigation report.
Earlier, the court had turned down an application seeking reinvestigation of the case and accepted the challan submitted by police in this matter.
The court also rejected an application of Jibran Nasir plaintiff in this matter requesting the court to frame the charges against Maulana Abdul Aziz. After rejecting the application, court directed the police to quash the FIR registered against the Lal Masjid cleric.
The plaintiff of this petition Jibran Nasir, a civil society activist, had challenged the police investigation report, which had declared Maulana Aziz as innocent in the case registered against the cleric in 2014.
The federal police had booked Aziz by registering a case in the Aabpara police after he allegedly threatened several civil society activists. The case was registered under section 506(ii) of PPC for extending threats to someone to kill him and it was registered on the application submitted by Jibran Nasir, Athar Naeem, Farzana Bari, Senator Sehar Kamran and others for extending life threats.
In the challan submitted before the court, police declared Aziz as innocent, saying that there was no concrete evidence against him. Aziz then filed an application requesting the court to quash the case.
Previously, Nasir had filed a counter-application on October 22 challenging the police investigation report and demanded a fresh inquiry. He said the police conducted a mala fide investigation and misled the court.
Advocate Tariq Asad, counsel for Aziz, maintained that police had investigated the issue objectively and declared the cleric innocent on merit. He said none of the eight complainants in the case provided any evidence against his client.
In 2014, the police had registered two cases against Maulana Abdul Aziz. One case was registered with Aabpara police station on 17 October, 2014 under section 295-A of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and ¾ of Amplifier Act for making hatred speech and violating amplifier act.
The second case was registered with the same police station on 19 December, 2014 under section 506(ii) of PPC for extending threats to someone to kill him. The second FIR was registered on the application submitted by Jibran Nasir, Athar Naeem, Farzana Bari, Senator Sehar Kamran and others for extending life threats. Maulana Aziz was already exonerated by the court in the case registered for making hatred speech. Now, the second FIR registered against him for extending life threats will also be quashed on the court directions.
