The Supreme Court (SC) stayed on Friday a trial by the court of an additional district judge in Lahore in a Rs 10 billion defamation suit filed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif against PTI founder Imran Khan.
In his suit filed in 2017, PM Shehbaz said Imran levelled baseless allegations against him. He sought a decree for the recovery of Rs 10bn as compensation from the defendant for the publication of defamatory content.
The defamation suit said Imran wrongly accused PM Shehbaz of offering Rs 10bn to the latter through a common friend in exchange for withdrawing the Panama Papers case.
The PTI founder had contended in his reply that he had disclosed the alleged incident for the consumption of the public at large, and an act in the interest of the public good did not constitute any defamation. He maintained that he did not specifically attribute any statement to the PM Shehbaz while narrating the incident.
A three-judge SC bench, headed by Justice Ayesha A Malik and including Justices Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar and Ishtiaq Ibrahim, took up a set of review petitions filed by Imran in the case.
The court also issued a notice to the respondent as no one was present on behalf of PM Shehbaz and directed the court office to fix the case for a hearing at the earliest.
Senator Barrister Ali Zafar, who was representing Imran, argued before the SC that his client could not appear before the trial court as he was injured after being shot in the leg, referring to an assassination attempt on the former premier in November 2022.
Zafar said the trial court had closed the right to defend despite previously acknowledging the PTI founder’s injury. Now, a trial court has commenced recording evidence and testimonies of witnesses in the case, the counsel said.
At that, Justice Malik wondered how the trial court had “terminated the right to defence” after acknowledging that Imran had been injured.
Subsequently, the SC issued a notice to the respondent and directed the court office fix the review petitions for hearing at the earliest.
Imran had filed review petitions in the case after the trial court had close the right to defence – a decision that was upheld by the Lahore High Court (LHC) and endorsed by the SC on February 21, 2023.
The trial court, through its order on October 20, 2022, had dismissed Imran’s objections in the case over the rejection of PM Shehbaz’s interrogatories – a set of written questions served by one party to the other – and directed the PTI founder to submit his answers.
Later, through a subsequent order of November 24, 2022, the trial court struck off the right of defence due to the non-submission of answers to the interrogatories.