By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Authorities have launched a terrorism investigation after senior judges at the Supreme Court of Pakistan and Lahore High Court received threatening letters containing a suspicious substance, Dawn newspaper reported on Thursday.
The letters, which arrived a day after similar threats were made to the Islamabad High Court, were addressed to several judges, including Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa and Justice Athar Minallah, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, and Justice Aminuddin.
The letters sent by an unknown group threatened the judges of the Supreme Court for ‘rescuing evil’.
The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) has registered cases in both Islamabad and Lahore under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
According to the First Information Report (FIR), the letters were received by the Receipt and Issue Branch of the Supreme Court on March 29/30 and were forwarded to the judges’ staff without being opened.
The senders, identified only as Gulshan Khatoon and Sajjad Hussain, did not provide return addresses.
The envelopes, which contained a suspicious powder, were intercepted by the police and sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Islamabad for analysis. The results of the toxicological and chemical tests are pending.
The letters received by at least five judges of the Lahore High Court were also sent to the forensics laboratory and a case by the CTD was registered.
The judges who received the letters were Chief Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmad Khan, senior puisne judge Justice Shujaat Ali Khan, Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan, Justice Aalia Neelum, and Justice Abid Aziz Sheikh.
Dawn quoted an unnamed police official as saying that the staff did not open the envelopes and handed them over to police officials.
The police also arrested the postman of a private courier company, who allegedly delivered the suspicious letters to the high court with no details of the dispatchers.
The incident follows recent concerns over judicial independence, with six Islamabad High Court judges alerting the Supreme Judicial Council to pressure tactics from the country’s security and military’s spy agency, including abduction and surveillance.
This latest incident echoes a similar episode in September last year when a bag containing grenades, a pistol, and a threatening letter addressed to judges and generals was discovered in Islamabad. The ominous message, attributed to Tehreek Tahaffuz Namoos-i-Pakistan.
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