Azam Swati was handed over to Balochistan police late on Thursday night, he will be kept in Kuchlak jail while cases filed against him in Quetta proceed.

Azam Swati was arrested from Islamabad in the early hours of Sunday for making tweets against senior military officials. A district court in Islamabad has already sent him on a 14-day remand.

This is Swati’s second arrest for criticising army officials. The first came in August of this year, after which Azam Swati had alleged custodial torture.

Islamabad High Court also reserved judgement in Swati’s request to transfer all cases registered against him to Islamabad.

On Thursday morning, Swati had approached the Islamabad High Court to request that the cases filed against him in different parts of the country be consolidated. He had told the court that false cases had been filed against him in Balochistan and Sindh. He had claimed that travelling all over the country for the cases posed a security threat to his life.

“The Petitioner invokes Constitutional jurisdiction of this Honourable Court inter alia on the question of larger public importance and seeks the remedy of transferring all the FIR’s at once place/jurisdiction to enable the petitioner to effectively defend himself,” Swati said in the petition filed through counsel Babar Awan.

However, the additional attorney general had maintained that since the 18th amendment, the federal government had no right to have the cases moved to islamabad.