Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Monday handed disgraced Senator Nehal Hashmi the charge sheet in the contempt case pertaining to his controversial speech against the judiciary and members of the joint investigation team (JIT) probing allegations of money laundering against the Sharif family.

Hashmi was charged with ‘contempt of court’ under Article 204(2) of the Constitution of Pakistan, read with Section 3 of the Contempt of Court Ordinance, 2003. According to the charge sheet, Hashmi was charged with ‘threatening judges of the Supreme Court, their children, JIT members and their families’. The court also said that Hashmi’s speech sought to ‘scandalise the court, bring the authority of the court into ridicule and disrespect’.

The charge sheet further said that Hashmi ‘obstructed, interfered with and prejudiced the process of law and the proceedings of the Supreme Court’. Last month, the former PML-N leader was booked in a case in the SC after a speech he made on May 28 went viral on social media and was also aired on news channels. In a video recording of the speech, the senator could be heard using threatening language against “those investigating” the Sharif family.

Hashmi’s controversial speech had landed him in hot water, as he was directed by his party to tender his resignation from the Senate – which he later withdrew – while the PML-N revoked his party membership. A case was registered against the senator on June 4 at Karachi’s Bahadurabad police station under Sections 189 (threat of injury to public servant), 228 (intentional insult or interruption to public servant sitting in judicial proceeding) and 505 (statements inciting public mischief) of the Pakistan Penal Code on behalf of the state after the attorney general asked the Sindh prosecutor general to initiate proceedings since the speech was made in Karachi.

Published in Daily Times, July 11^th , 2017.