Police on Wednesday arrested Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) Central Secretary General Ahmed Ali Kohzad in a murder case after a sessions court in Quetta rejected his bail application.

Kohzad was elected to the Balochistan Assembly in the July 25 polls from PB-26 Quetta. The MPA-elect from the Hazara community is already facing an inquiry in connection with his Pakistani nationality. He was declared non-Pakistani by Nadra which has blocked his national identity card on the suspicion that he is an Afghan national. The issue is currently pending before the interior ministry.

Also in August, a court had issued warrants for his arrest after he was nominated in a murder case in Quetta's Quaidabad police station.

Sources at the time had told Dawn that the Crime Investigation Agency of police force requested the court to issue the MPA-elect’s arrest warrants in the murder case of Muhammad Hafeez, a goldsmith whose body was found in Marriabad a few years ago.

Initially, the murder case was registered against unidentified people at the Quaidabad police station, but later police nominated five suspects, including Kohzad, on an application of the son of the deceased.

Afterwards, the case was transferred to the CIA for investigation and it was disclosed that the plot of the land where the body of Hafeez was found was owned by Kohzad and three of his friends.

On the other hand, Muhammad Rahim, the brother of the deceased, said that his nephew had mistakenly nominated Kohzad in the case and later they had come to know that Kohzad had nothing to do with the murder.

Kohzad had denied any involvement in the murder and said that he was not the owner of the plot from where the body was recovered. He said that he with his three friends wanted to purchase that plot but could not do so because they didn’t have the required amount to pay the price of the plot.

The HDP leader had submitted an application for bail in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Asadullah Khan Kakar. The court rejected his bail application on Wednesday and the police arrested him from the court premises.