KARACHI: Mayor of Karachi, Waseem Akhtar has been granted bail in three cases pertaining to the May 12 riots and hate speech.

The bail was granted by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Thursday. The ATC-III judge allowed bail to Akhtar in three cases including the two revolving around the May 12, 2007, riots in the city against a surety of Rs300,000 in each of the cases and observed that he may be released if not arrested in any other case.

The mayor, however, will remain in jail since he faces around a dozen more cases and has to first obtain bail in all the cases before he gets out of jail.

Imprisoned mayor of the metropolis was taken into custody in July this year after an ATC had rejected his interim bail application in Dr Asim Hussain’s terror facilitation case. Days after his incarceration, he was arrested in several other cases dating back to 2007 when he was the home adviser to the Sindh chief minister.

According to MQM legal aid committee official Advocate Latif Pasha, the bail order was good enough in setting a precedent for other cases to deal with identical cases.