Court defers hearing of May 12 violence case

KARACHI: Mayor Karachi Waseem Akhtar reached an anti terrorism court on Saturday to attend hearing of the May 12 violence case, ARY News reported.

Twenty other accused were also produced before the court during the hearing. However, one of the accused, Zulfikar didn’t turn up and his lawyer informed the court that his client was admitted at a hospital due to cardiac problem.

The court adjourned the hearing till December 12 due to absence of one of the nominated persons in the case.

Mr. Akhtar and other accused could be indicted in the next hearing in one of the cases related to the 11 years old violence that had killed scores of people in the city. A number of cases related to May 12 incident have been pending in the ATC.

An ATC had indicted Waseem Akhtar along with other accused in one of the cases pertaining to May 12, 2007 violent clashes in Karachi.

Akhtar incumbent Mayor of Karachi, was holding the office of provincial adviser on home affairs in Sindh during that period. Akhtar had been affiliated with Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), an ally of the then government supported by military ruler Pervez Musharraf, the party was facing charges of inciting bloody clashes on May 12, 2007 in the metropolis.

Riots erupted across the city on the day, when the then suspended chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry arrived at the Jinnah International Airport of Karachi.

Two rival rallies organized on that day; one by the lawyers bodies backed by the opposition political parties to welcome chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, and the other by the city’s dominant party, also a coalition partner of the Musharraf-led government, against “politicization” of judicial reference against the chief justice.