ISLAMABAD: A division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday issued a notice to the special judge of an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) after the son of a slain prosecutor of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) moved an application against the inordinate delay in his father`s murder case.

FIA special prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali was killed on May 3, 2013 when he was on his way to an ATC in Rawalpindi where he was to submit a challan against former President retired General Pervez Musharraf in connection with the Benazir Bhutto murder case.

In his petition, the slain prosecutor`s son, Chaudhry Nisar Ali said that in addition to the Benazir Bhutto murder case, his father was also the special prosecutor in the Mumbai attacks case, the army house attack case and other high profile cases.

In the petition, he said that despite the arrest of the accused for the murder of the slain prosecutor in 2013, the ATC of Islamabad is yet to indict them andtheir trail has been stalled for the last several months.

According to the petition, the Margalla police had on June 12, 2013 arrested the main accused, Mohammad Abdullah Umer alias Ghulam Ullah from the Quaid-i-Azam Hospital Islamabad and co-accused Hammad Adil and Adnan Adil from their residence in Adil Heights in Bhara Kahu in August and September the same year.

The police had submitted the challan against the accused persons on September 30, 2013 and there were 36 prosecution witnesses against them.

The petition alleged that the ATC judge did not indict the accused till 2015 and that on June 24, 2015, the ATC had fixed the date for framing the charges, i.e. indicting, the accused persons when Javed Ikram, a maternal uncle of the main accused, Umer, had informed the court that Umer and his cousin Ammar Dadan, who is a lawyer, were kidnapped by intelligence agencies.

Ikram had told the ATC that a petition seeking the recovery of the two men was pending for adjudication before the IHC.

Chaudhry Nisar Ali`s petition allegedthat `after the so called kidnapping of the accused...the ATC has stopped the proceeding of the case contending that until and unless the accused is not recovered, he could not proceed further against the (under custody) accused`, and said this was `against the law`.

The petition said that the accused, Umer is a dangerous criminal and that the same ATC had on June 17, 2014 granted him post arrest bail for medical reasons.

Citing relevant sections of the Anti Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997, the petition said that `the court shall on taking cognizance of a case, proceed with the trail from day to day and shall decide the case within seven days` The petition requested the court to direct the ATC judge to conclude the trailagainstthe undercustody accused in the timeframe prescribed in the ATA 1997.

After hearing preliminary arguments of the petitioner, the IHC issued a notice to the ATC judge and sought his comment within a month.

A further hearing of the case has been adjourned till a date to be fixed by the registrar`s of fice.