May 12 tragedy: Mayor Karachi, 21 others indicted

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court indicted Mayor Waseem Akhtar and 21 others in two cases related to May 12 carnage.

An ATC was hearing four cases related to May 12 incident in which more than 50 people were killed and over 100 injured the attacks on rallies by different political parties and lawyers who had attempted to receive the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi ahead of a lawyers’ gathering.

In the case, the court indicted the 21 suspects including the mayor in two cases, which all of them denied.

The ATC summoned the witnesses in the next hearing of the case.

On May 12, a major portion of Karachi’s main artery, Shahra-e-Faisal, turned into a battlefield when rival political groups clashed with each other soon after the arrival of the then chief justice of Pakistan. Due to the clash, the former chief justice did not move ahead from the lounge of the airport and returned to Islamabad without addressing a lawyers’ convention at Sindh High Court.

The thoroughfare was to be used by the procession of the then chief justice, but was made completely inaccessible to commuters as all the intersections were blocked by large containers and trucks.