PESHAWAR: A local court on Saturday granted bail to a suspected militant, who remained in detention for around 10 years.

An additional district and sessions judge accepted bail plea of the accused, Sher Mohammad, aresident of Ambar area in Mohmand tribal district, on condition of furnishing two sureties of Rs200,000 each.

The petitioner was tal(en into custody in October 2010 by security forces and after keeping him in detention for eight years he was handed over to the tribal administration of Mohmand Agency (now Mohmand tribal district).

The security forces alleged that he was a member of Tehreeki-Taliban Pakistan and he was carrying a wouldbe suicide bomber on motorbike when he was apprehended.

Advocate Shabbir Hussain Gigyani appeared for the petitioner and contended that his cli-ent was kept in illegal detention for eight years on Ectitious charges. He stated that the petitioner was handed over to the tribal administration in May 2018 and subsequently an assistant political agent (APA) convicted him on August 18, 2018 and sentenced him to 40 years imprisonment.

The counsel pointed out that as the APA had convicted the petitioner after the passage of the Constitution (Twenty-Fifth Amendment) Act, 2018, through which erstwhile tribal areas were merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, therefore the said conviction was challenged before Peshawar High Court.

He said that the high court hadset aside his conviction as the APA had no power to conduct the trial after merger of tribal areas and remanded the case to Mohmand district and sessions judge.

Mr Gigyani stated that later on, the district public prosecutor and district police officer transferred the case to anti-terrorism court for trial.

He argued that there was no evidence against the petitioner and he was kept in detention on flimsy grounds.

He pointed out that the socalled joint investigation team in its report clearly mentioned that there was no documentary, audio, video and eye witness evidence available against him.Despite that the JIT recommended that he should be sentenced to 40 years imprisonment.

Moreover, he said that a socalled confessional statement was referred to by the JIT wherein the petitioner stated that he was going on motorbike and a teenage boy on roadside asked him to drop him on way.

He added that the JIT claimed that the said boy was a would-be suicide bomber, but nowhere in record it was mentioned what happened to that boy, whether he was also tried or not.

Even if that confessional statement was accepted, the petitioner stated that he did not know the boy, he said.