A court in Pakistan on Tuesday upheld an earlier order which called for registration of murder case against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif over police firing on supporters of a religious scholar in June that had killed 11 people, lawyers said
The police had reportedly fired on the supporters of the religious leader, Dr. Tahir ul Qadri, when they tried to prevent the police from removing blockades from the secretariat of Qadri's religious school "Minhaj-ul-Quran" in the eastern city of Lahore.
At least eleven of Qadri's Pakistan Awami Tehrik (PAT) workers were killed and over 100 people were injured in the incident.
On Aug. 16, a lower court in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, ordered the police to register murder cases against the prime minister, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, brother of the prime minister Shahbaz Sharif and some other ministers. Murder cases were also ordered against the provincial and city police chiefs.
The PAT workers had moved the court to file the cases after the police had been reluctant to register the cases.
A group of four federal ministers had challenged the lower court's verdict in the Lahore High Court, which rejected their appeal and upheld the previous order.
The court ruled there is no justification for the federal ministers to challenge the lower court's order.
Officials said the government is likely to file appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Hours before the order, an inquiry commission of the incident said that the police had intentionally opened fire on Qadri's activists.
The court has issued the order at a time when Nawaz Sharif is facing a political challenge by an influential politician, Imran Khan, whose supporters have staged a sit-in in Islamabad for 10 days. Khan demands resignation of the prime minister over his claim that last year's elections were rigged.
The prime minister has rejected the calls for his resignation.
As there is no let-up in political tensions, chief of the country's powerful army, General Raheel Sharif, called on the prime minister and discussed the overall security environment including the prevailing situation in the meeting, the Prime Minister's Office said.
"There was a consensus on the need to resolve the on-going issue expeditiously in the best national interest," a statement from the office said.