World News | Pak Court Remands Journalist to FIA Custody for Two Days
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. A Pakistani court Wednesday approved a two-day physical remand for journalist Waheed Murad and handed him over to the Federal Investigation Agency, hours after his family claimed that he was "forcibly" taken away by unknown persons from his house.
Islamabad, Mar 26 (PTI) A Pakistani court Wednesday approved a two-day physical remand for journalist Waheed Murad and handed him over to the Federal Investigation Agency, hours after his family claimed that he was "forcibly" taken away by unknown persons from his house.
Murad's family claimed that he was "forcibly taken away by unknown persons from his residence" in the G-8 area of Islamabad at around 2.00 am.
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However, Murad was produced before Judicial Magistrate Abbas Shah of the Islamabad District and Sessions Court, who granted his two-day physical remand to the FIA.
The FIA also informed the court that the journalist was booked under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Peca) Act, dealing with cybercrimes, social media and fake news.
Murad was associated with the Urdu News website and previously worked at News One TV and Ausaf newspaper.
Earlier, his mother-in-law Abida Nawaz told the Urdu News that unknown persons knocked at the door around 2.00 am and said that they were from the police and checking if any Afghan national was living in the house.
"They broke the door to enter when Waheed refused to open it and took him away,” she claimed.
Separately, Abida in a petition filed in the IHC for his recovery claimed that the journalist had raised his voice about the recent alleged disappearance of two brothers of a US-based journalist Ahmad Noorani.
She claimed that Waheed was “forcibly disappeared from his Sector G-8, Islamabad…by unknown officials presumably belonging to intelligence agencies, and accompanied by persons in black uniforms and two police double cabin vehicles.”
She described herself as an “eyewitness to the enforced disappearance, and was also herself manhandled by the abductors who also took away her phone”.
Making the defence ministry, the Islamabad police chief and the Karachi Company police's station house officer respondents, she urged the IHC to “immediately trace and produce” the journalist.
Abida also claimed that the journalist had raised his voice about the recent alleged disappearance of two brothers of a US-based journalist Ahmad Noorani.
The brothers of Noorani were allegedly “forcibly disappeared” from their Islamabad home. A petition had already been filed in the IHC for their recovery.
So far, the police or the government have not responded to the disappearance.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)