Daily Times

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday announced its reserved verdict providing relief to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief as it declared the criminal proceedings against him in the Toshakhana case inadmissible. The IHC set aside the ruling of lower court in Toshakhana criminal case and instructed it to re-decide the admissibility of case after hearing PTI’s chairman Imran Khan. Chief Justice Aamer Farooq announced the verdict which was reserved on June 23, after hearing arguments from both sides at length. As per the order issued by the bench, the court asked the session court to consider the petition of ousted prime minister regarding maintainability of the case as pending and decide it again within seven days. It observed that the trial court had dismissed the application of the petitioner with insufficient reasons which left the main legal issues undecided. It may be mentioned here that Imran Khan was indicted in toshakhana criminal case on May 10, and dismissed his petition against admissibility of the case. The petitioner had challenged the order before IHC against the verdict. Official documents revealed in April that the PTI chief and his wife had retained 52 free gifts worth millions “without paying a single penny”. The list of Toshakhana gifts received by the ex-PM Imran between August 2018 and December 2021 had remained a secret during his tenure, making the situation scandalous to reports of hiding the information from the tax authorities. The Toshakhana is a department under the Cabinet Division that maintains the record of the precious gifts given to rulers, parliamentarians, and officials by heads of other governments, states, and foreign dignitaries as a goodwill gesture. The then government had adopted the stance that the disclosure of any information related to Toshakhana would jeopardise international ties. The list of gifts showed that the other valuables were kept by the couple after paying a meagre amount, much less than the assessed value.