The Sindh High Court on Friday granted protective bail to the former home minister of Balochistan, Shoaib Nausherwani, in Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti's murder case. A single bench, headed by Justice Shahid Anwar Bajwa, granted the bail for three weeks against a Rs 500,000 surety. Nausherwani had moved an application before the SHC, requesting protective bail following the issuance of non-bailable warrants for his arrest by a court in Sibi, Balochistan.
His lawyers, Muhammad Ilyas Khan and Farooq Ahmed, submitted that Nawabzada Jamil Akbar Bugti, a son of late Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, had lodged an FIR in the murder of his father and the chief of Jamhoori Watan Party. They said that at that time, the petitioner was the provincial home minister, but had no knowledge of the action taken against Nawab Bugti.
They insisted that the action had been taken by federal government agencies. Nausherwani, they said, was not present at the crime scene and he did not have any role in it. They pointed out that the former chief minister of Balochistan, Jam Muhammad Yousuf, also nominated in this case, had already been granted protective bail by a division bench of the Balochistan High Court on July 16 this year.
The applicant, they said, wanted to surrender voluntarily before the trial court and requested the court to grant him protective bail. The SHC order said: "Without touching merits of the bail application, protective bail is granted for a period of three weeks to the applicant, because one of intervening weeks is Eid week, upon his furnishing solvent surety for a sum of Rs 500,000". A PR bond worth the same amount was also deemed necessary for granting the bail.