ISLAMABAD: An Islamabad judicial magistrate on Tuesday remanded PTI leader Ali Amin Gandapur in police custody for two more days in a case pertaining to threatening government and national institutions.
Gandapur, a former federal minister and the PTI’s central leader, was arrested on Thursday night outside the building of the Peshawar High Court’s Dera Ismail Khan bench — on charges of two criminal cases registered against him by DI Khan police — after an hours-long drama and sent to the cen-tral jail on a six-day judicial remand the next day.
On Saturday, Islamabad and Punjab police from Bhakar reached DI Khan and took the PTI leader to Islamabad. An Is-lamabad judicial magistrate on Sunday remanded him into police custody for a day.
The first information report (FIR) registered against Gandapur mentions an audio leak, in which he could purportedly be heard using derogatory language against the federal coalition. According to the FIR, the audio was aired on a private news channel.
Earlier in the day, Gandapur was presented in an anti-terrorism court (ATC) upon the expiry of his one-day physical remand, following which the ATC judge directed police to produce him in a relevant district court as terrorism charges had been removed from the case against him.
Gandapur was presented in the court of Judicial Magistrate Ihtasham Alam Khan today, where Investigation Officer (IO) Abdul Sattar requested a 10-day extension in the PTI leader’s remand for voice matching, weapon recovery and further investigation.
According to the court order the IO contended that he could only get the DVD recording of the incident from the Paki-stan Electronic Media Regula-tory Authority (Pemra) due to a shortage of time and it could not be matched with Gandapur’s voice since the procedure was required to be done “in a proper manner and procedure at a proper place/laboratory”.
The court observed that “admittedly, voice matching is very much necessary in order to brought on record the truth or otherwise of the matter”.
Therefore, it said, “for the purpose of voice matching and for further investigation, two days physical remand/custody of the accused is allowed sub-ject to pre and post medical examination of the accused”.
It directed the IO to submit a report on the investigation’s progress and present Gandapur before the court at the next hearing on April 13. The “IO is directed to show concrete progress in investigation”, the court order read. –Agencies
