ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court on Tuesday declared the detention of Chaudhry Parvez Elahi under Maintenance of Public Order (MPO-3) illegal and ordered the immediate release of the PTI leader.
High Court Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri presided over the hearing of the case. The court ordered Parvez Elahi to appear in the court next Tuesday. The court ordered Parvez Elahi to refrain from engaging in any provocative behaviour up to the next hearing. The court further said that Parvez Elahi would not issue any statement to the media until the next hearing.
Pervez Elahi’s lawyer said that the Lahore High Court had ordered the release of Elahi on September 1, and the LHC had stopped the arrest of the PTI president in any other case. However, the Islamabad police violated the orders of the Lahore High Court and arrested the former Punjab chief minister.
Counsel for Parvez Elahi further said that the former chief minister was forcibly taken away by the Islamabad police in Lahore and taken to Islamabad. Plainclothes officials picked him up and put him in a car.
Later, the court quashed Parvez Elahi’s arrest under MPO 3 and ordered his immediate release.
Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday issued notice to IG Islamabad Dr. Akbar Nasir Khan during the hearing of PTI president Parvez Elahi’s production request in court.
On Friday, Elahi was detained by Islamabad police near his residence shortly after the LHC released him with an order from possible arrest by a government agency or preventive detention.
The arrest came when a team of Islamabad police, assisted by the Lahore police, intercepted a white SUV in which Elahi was travelling with his lawyer Sardar Latif Khosa on the way to his home. They forcibly transferred him to an unmarked white car. The arrest was caught on camera and widely shared on social media, drawing condemnation from various quarters, including the Pakistan Bar Council.
