KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Friday dismissed a set of applications filed by the provincial government seeking to an additional witness to be called to testify before the trial court in a case pending against outlawed Peoples Amn Committee chief Uzair Baloch and others.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha observed that prima facie, the belated applications appeared to be a delaying tacticon the behalf of the prosecution to further hold up the trial, which had already lingered on for a very long period.

The government through the prosecutor general had filed applications against an order of the trial court passed in March and contended that the prosecution needed to examine the author of the report of a joint investigation team since he was a very important witness.

The bench noted that initially, the case was put on trial in 2012 and subsequently the charge was amended thrice, in 2013, 2017and 2020, and yet the trial had not been concluded.

It further observed that the prose cution should have include d the witnesses, who it had intended to produce the JIT report, which in any event only has legal value of a report of Section 173 CrPC.

The SHC also said that prosecution cannot keep the accused in jail for years ... and in this case all the witnesses on its calendar have been called, and then out of blue prosecution filed an application to call further witnesses.

It directed the antiterrorismcourt-XII, which is conducting the trial, to complete the proceedings of the trial expeditiously and not later than three months.

Uzair Baloch, who is facing dozens of cases, was arrested by Rangers in January 2016 and charge-sheeted to face trials in over 50 cases. He has so far been acquitted in over a dozen criminal cases.

In 2017, a military court had sentenced him to 12 years in prison for his involvement in espionage activities and working for foreign intelligence agencies in 2017.