PoJK Court Denies Bail for Ahmed Farhad Shah After His Unexpected Discovery in Custody

An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) has denied the bail request for Ahmed Farhad Shah, who was forcibly abducted. The court stated that the legal arguments presented by his counsel were not applicable to the case, according to Dawn.

Shah, who was abducted from his Islamabad residence on May 15 and had been missing since, was discovered in the custody of Gujjar Kohala police, a village near the PoJK border with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on May 29. This discovery occurred while an ongoing case for his safe return was being heard by the Islamabad High Court (IHC). The hearing took a serious turn when the IHC summoned defense and intelligence secretaries.

Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani of the IHC, who is overseeing Shah’s case, posed 12 questions mainly concerning the roles and duties of spy agencies.

Initially, a First Information Report (FIR) filed on May 13 at the Saddar police station was kept confidential but later revealed it was against 150-200 unidentified “miscreants” accused of “inciting violence, blocking roads, and attacking a paramilitary convoy from Bararkot to Muzaffarabad on May 13” under the direction of the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), as reported by Dawn.

Karam Dad Khan, in his defense of Shah, argued that Shah was not named in the FIR and had been wrongfully implicated. The counsel also questioned how Shah could have organized these activities while he was in Islamabad, especially since no internet services were available in PoJK during the protests.

It was argued during the case that Shah was added to the FIR after being traced through social media, as Dawn reported. Shah had allegedly shared “factually wrong, provocative, and hate-filled material” on his Facebook account during the protests.

The special prosecutor contended that Shah incited hatred against law enforcement on May 13, leading to additional charges in the FIR. Despite the opposition counsel supporting the bail, the prosecutor sought to recover Shah’s phone.

Special judge Mahmood Farooq concluded, “A perusal of the advertised material reveals that the content was not only hateful and inflammatory but also exaggerated the loss of lives during the protests, escalating provocation and hatred between the public and the law-enforcement agencies.” He stated that “Prima facie, the petitioner/accused appears to be connected with the offenses initially recorded and subsequently added in the FIR.”