Islamabad: Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan has filed a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking enforcement of his fundamental rights, including free movement across the country, media reports said on Tuesday.
Advocate Zubair Afzal Rana filed the petition on behalf of Khan on Monday against the September 25, 2019 judgement of the Lahore High Court (LHC) that had rejected his similar plea on the grounds that it lacked jurisdiction in view of the special security measures taken by the state for his protection.
Khan has requested the Supreme Court to pronounce that fundamental rights, including the freedom of movement, could not be abridged, curtailed or denied arbitrarily merely on likes or dislikes of anyone and under the garb of reasonable restrictions, the Dawn news reported.
"Can the government authorities be allowed to violate constitutional safeguards while restraining the petitioner from meeting his near and dear ones, servants, family members, friends, journalists, teaching staff of different colleges, universities, high officials and bureaucrats?” the petitioner asked.
The petition questioned whether the LHC was justified in making a gratuitous advice to the petitioner to approach the Islamabad High Court for redressal of his grievances.
Khan said that he was the pioneer of Pakistan's nuclear programme and it was with untiring efforts of the people at the helm of affairs that he had succeeded in making the country a nuclear power.
The petitioner said that he felt proud of having done his bit to secure Pakistan from evil eyes of neighbours and other adversaries.
Khan said that ever since he had come to Pakistan and started working on the nuclear project, he had enjoyed personal security befitting of his status, but now the situation was that personnel of security agencies had stationed themselves in a house next door to make sure that no one had access to him.
