The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has thrown out petitions against the PTI chairman and his wife’s arrest in the second reference linked to Toshakhana gifts.
On Wednesday, a division bench of the LHC headed by Justice Miangul Hasan Aurangzeb heard the petitions of Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi. They wanted a direction to NAB to state details of all the cases and FIRs, inquiries, detention orders,, and other notices as are pending against them. Further, they sought an order to stop any new arrests in any newly created cases or inquiries.
The bench threw out the petitions as they were “infructuous. ”
To the surprise of participants in the hearing, the NAB prosecutor divulged that the Toshakhana reference has already been filed and Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi if they so desire could avail the remedy of post-arrest bail.
The petitioners’ lawyer, Salman Safdar, said that the notices were called “vague” by the court before and responded to the fact that this was the second action in the Toshakhana case.
The court sought to know whether the IO had made any headway in the investigation and whether he had paid a visit to the Adiala Jail to carry out further investigations. The IO asserted that they had visited the jail and had received the results of the questionnaire which had been administered to them.
The new case was registered on Toshakhana and both Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi were arrested on July 13, just after their Iddat case was dismissed. The operation was conducted by an NAB team of Deputy Director Mohsin Haroon from Adiala Jail.
Before that, on July 25, a two-member division bench composed of CJ Aamer Farooq and Justice Saman Raffat Imtiaz had heard the petitions against their arrest. But PTI’s lawyer urged that Chief Justice Aamer Farooq should excuse himself from the case, as the Supreme Judicial Council had received a complaint against him. But, learning her fate, the Chief Justice refused to be removed and ordered the lawyer to go on with his speech.
Later on, a fresh bench was constituted to hear the cases as Justice Saman Raffat Imtiaz proceeded for summer vacation and was not available to hear the case.