An anti-terrorism court on Tuesday removed Section 7 of the Anti Terrorism Act from the FIR against six university students and directed the police to produce them before another court.
The six students – Hafiz Wajid, Abuzar Ghafari, Zubair Sahi, Farooq and two others – are accused of assaulting and detaining two professors of the Punjab University Law College. The court ruled that the alleged offence did not merit a terrorism trial.
Meanwhile, Muslim Town police produced 22 students accused of various public disorder offences, in relation to the clashes between police and Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) activists a day earlier, before a magistrate at the Model Town courts, seeking to retain them in custody for 10 days for further investigation. The judge rejected the request and remanded them in judicial custody for 14 days.
The judge confirmed the after-arrest bail of eight students accused in an FIR under Section 186 (obstructing a public servant from doing their duty) of the Pakistan Penal Code at Rs30,000 each.
Police have registered a total of nine FIRs against the 22 students, and hundreds of unnamed others, for allegedly rioting, burning public property, attempted murder, assaulting a professor, firing in the air and creating panic at the campus.
Lawyers for the accused students submitted that they had been implicated in forged cases and they had not been involved in the violence at the PU on Monday.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 4th, 2013.