In a new twist to the Mehrangate case of Asghar Khan’s 1996 petition about ISI’s bankrolling of IJI’s creation in the early 1990s to block PPP’s re-election, the Supreme Court (SC) has rejected the Interior Ministry’s report on the scandal, which it says is based purely on the memory of the then FIA director Rehman Malik. The report quotes Malik as saying that he was assigned the duty to investigate the Mehran case by the then Interior Minister General Naseerullah Babar. More significantly, the court has stressed the need to make a distinction whether the distribution of Rs. 140 million among politicians to counter the PPP was an individual or institutional act. The court has directed General Aslam Baig’s counsel to furnish details of the accounts maintained by the ISI — a revelation in Baig’s deposition. Intriguingly, both the Mehran and Habib Bank inquiry reports have been found missing. In all such cases the normal investigative procedure is to focus on possible would-be beneficiaries of the disappearance, and then through a process of elimination, to hone in on the real culprits. It is not for the honourable apex court to investigate the matter; it is for the government to do so. Surprisingly, a journalist has claimed he has both the reports in his possession, at which the apex court has directed him to present them before it. Initiated by General Aslam Baig with the support of then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the bankrolling of the creation of the IJI — a coalition of Islamist or likeminded parties — to block the secular PPP’s re-election amounted to a serious tinkering with the electoral process, which is a grave criminal offence. Funds were siphoned off to about 40 beneficiaries, a crime for which Mehran Bank chief Younus Habib was arrested in 1994, and convicted on December 14, 1995 to a 10-year term by a special court of banking offences. PML-N has meanwhile angrily rebutted the charge of being on the receiving end of the bribe, and has filed a hefty damages suit against Younus Habib. The honourable apex court, in its judicial wisdom, has taken up Asghar Khan’s 1994 petition in 2012, and many would argue that a lot of complications, including the disappearance of the original investigation reports, would have been avoided if the hearing of this history-making case had been taken up expeditiously. The case holds important lessons for us: the constant interference by the military and its intelligence arms in politics and the malign influence this has left on our march towards a modern, democratic state. The SC would do the country a great service by getting to the bottom of the whole sordid affair and bringing all the powerful players to book, as a deterrent against repetition of such shenanigans. *