The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday suspended an arrest warrant, issued by an Additional District and Sessions Court on October 31, against the chairman of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in the blasphemous caricatures case.

The Court issued non-bailable warrants against the cartoonists, publishers of the Danish, Italian and French newspapers as well as the PTA chairman and officials in a case that said that the PTA had failed to ban the newspapers’ websites in Pakistan. The case was registered on the complaint of Maulvi Iqbal Haider in the Gulberg police station.

PTA’s counsel, Sibtain Mahmood, submitted that the issuance of arrest warrants against the PTA officials and its chairman was not admissible in the law as no crime was committed by them.

The SHC’s division bench headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed, after preliminary hearing of the petition, suspended the arrest warrants and issued notice to Advocate General and Deputy Attorney General Sindh for November 18 for further hearing of the case.

Petition dismissed: The SHC dismissed a petition of a police officer seeking a recommendation from the provincial and federal authorities to help him obtain a civil award from the presidency.

SSP Raja Umer Khatab, who survived an assassination attempt in August last year, said that he has been recommended by the police high ups for Sitara-e-Shujaat and the summary was sent to the Chief Secretary to forward it to the Cabinet Division, but the authorities concerned were not passing the recommendations depriving him of the right to get the civil award. The court was told by the provincial law officer that the petition has become anfractuous as the award was awarded by the presidency in August. The court dismissed the petition as anfractuous.