LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday adjourned to September 06 the proceedings in a petition challenging detention of Hafiz Saad Rizvi, leader of proscribed Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), and asked the law officer to submit his arguments on a point whether the Punjab government had jurisdiction to extend detention of a citizen after expiry of a specific time period.

Earlier, petitioner’s counsel Burhan Moazam Malik argued that the provincial government with mala fide intention extended detention of Rizvi under section 11 EEE of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 for another 90 days.

He said a review board comprising the high court’s judges had turned down a government’s plea to extend the detention of Rizvi under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance 1960. He therefore asked the court to declare the act of the government as illegal and direct it to release Rizvi immediately.

A law officer however opposed the petition and asked the court to dismiss the same for being not maintainable.

The detention of Rizvi had come after TLP staged sit-ins across the country demanding the government to expel the ambassador of France in the wake of blasphemous cartoons.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021