The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday directed the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) investigation officer to appear before the court along with relevant record of the inquiry against former president and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Dr Arif Alvi pertaining to hurting the religious feeling of the society.
The direction came on a petition of Dr Alvi and his spouse with regard to freezing of their bank accounts by the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) in relation to the inquiry. A federal law officer told the high court that the investigation officer could not attend the court due to his ill health and undertook to ensure his attendance on the next hearing.
A division bench of the high court headed by Justice Yousuf Ali Sayeed directed the investigation officer to appear before the court along with the relevant record of the investigation on the next date of hearing.
The NCCIA had earlier informed the bench that financial monitoring of the former president and his family was being carried out in order to ascertain any organised conspiracy involving financial gain by flaring up religious sentiments of the public.
An investigation officer of the NCCIA had submitted that an inquiry was initiated against the petitioner upon the source information to probe into a video on social media in which the petitioner allegedly made sacrilegious remarks.
The NCCIA officer submitted that the petitioner had prima facie perpetrated the heinous offence of blasphemy and thus flared, enraged and hurt the feelings of the Muslims in Pakistan as well across the world.
He said the remarks uttered by the petitioner just to advance his political agenda brought about emotional commotion across the country causing unrest and disorder among the national polity and society. Dr Alvi and his wife Samina Alvi had petitioned the SHC that their bank accounts had been blocked by private banks on the directions of the NCCIA.
The petitioners’ counsel Ali Tahir said the NCCIA had initiated baseless inquiries against Dr Alvi under the Pakistan Penal Code’s sections 298 and 298-A, which pertained to blasphemy-related allegations.
Tahir said the respondent agency’s officials had issued letters to the banks where his client and his family members had accounts and asked them to block them. He said the petitioner and his family members were unable to access personal and lawful funds due to the arbitrary and unlawful directives of the NCCIA issued to the private banks.
He also said that neither the Federal Investigation Agency Act nor the anti-money laundering law conferred any authority on the NCCIA to unilaterally freeze or block the accounts of the petitioners without observing due process of the law.
The counsel said the private banks and NCCIA had offered no opportunity of hearing to the petitioners. He said the absence of procedural safeguards in such a serious matter was not only alarming but also underscored the respondent agency’s disregard for law and constitutional governance.
On a previous hearing, the SHC had, as an interim measure, allowed Dr Alvi to withdraw up to Rs1 million from his bank account in Islamabad for the purpose of his general living expenses until the next hearing.
