KARACHI: An antiterrorism court on Monday issued fresh perpetual warrants against Muttahida Qaumi Movement founder Altaf Hussain, LondonbasedpartyleaderNadeemNusrat and two others allowing Pakistani authorities to approach Interpol for a red notice in a 1997 triple murder case.

Mohammed Minhaj Qazi, alias Asad, with his convicted andabsconding accomplices has been booked in the murder of the then managing director of the Karachi Electric Supply Company (now renamedK-Electric)ShahidHamid, his driver, and a guard in the Defence Housing Authority in 1997.

In the supplementary charge sheet filed last year, police had shown the MQM founder, Nadeem Nusrat, another London-based leader Sohail Zaidi and two workers, Rashid Akhtar alias Shaikh and Athar alias Mehboob, as absconders.The court had started the trial of the accused after declaring the absconders proclaimed offenders and issuing life warrants in July last year. But the investigating officer, Inspector Sarwar Khan, last week moved an application submitting that the POs were residing in London. He asked the court to issue fresh perpetual warrant against them so that the authorities concerned could approach Interpol for red notice in order to bring them back.

While allowing the IO`s applica-tion, the ATC-VI judge, who is conducting the trial inside the central prison, issued a fresh perpetual warrant against the POs.

In the charge sheet, Qazi was shown as one of the suspected shooters who, along with Saulat Mirza and two accomplices, had fired at the then KESC MD`s car with Kalashnikovs shortly after he left his house in DHA on July 5, 1997.

They added the offence had been carried out allegedly at the behest of the party leadership to avenge the removal of party supportersworking in the power utility.

An ATC had already sentenced MQM worker Saulat Ali Khan, better known as Saulat Mirza, to death in 1999 in this case and he was executed in Machh jail in Balochistan in May 2015.

A case was registered under Sections 302 (premeditated murder) and 34 (common intention) of Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 of Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, on the complaint of the KESC chief`s widow at the Defence police station.