Zardari’s tongue-cutting case: Names of officers removed from ECL

The Express Tribune

The federal government has removed the names of former inspector general police of Sindh Rana Maqbool and DIG Karachi Farooq Amin Qureshi from the exit control list (ECL). Both the former police officers are wanted in the case of wounding the tongue of Asif Ali Zardari during torturous interrogation when he was imprisoned in the second tenure of Nawaz Sharif. Rana Maqbool had filed a case against Zardari for causing injury to himself in jail. When the table turned in 1999 and Nawaz government was wound up by Pervez Musharraf, the then IG Rana Maqbool was also implicated in the airplane hijacking case along with Nawaz Sharif and his compatriots. In 2008, when Asif Ali Zardari became the president, the tongue cutting case became active, but Rana Maqbool and Farooq Qureshi stayed in Punjab under the wings of PML-N and refused to appear for any court hearing claiming threats to their lives. The PPP government’s interior minister Rehman Malik had put the names of these two ex-police officers on ECL. Now, under PML-N government, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar has directed removing names of Rana Maqbool and Farooq Amin Qureshi from ECL.