Daily Times

The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday observed that decisions on bail matters can only be made after knowing all the facts.

The LHC observed this while taking up the bail petition of Opposition Leader in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif. A three-member bench, headed by Justice Ali Baqar Najafi, and comprising Justice Aalia Neelum and Justice Shahbaz Rizvi, heard the case.

During the hearing, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif’s counsels Senator Azam Nazir Tarar and Amjad Pervez argued that they do not want to take the case back to where it began from.

However, Justice Najafi responded that the bench was not aware of the case, asking the counsels how they expect the bench to reach a verdict without knowing it.

Senator Tarar and Amjad Pervez contended that the Supreme Court had in one of its judgements maintained that the accused could not be deprived of the right of bail if the division bench had split decisions. The judge who gave the dissenting note had not elaborated on the points he believed the accused should not be granted bail, the counsel maintained. To this, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Special Prosecutor Syed Faisal Raza Bukhari argued that elaborating on the points did not matter. The bench further questioned the prosecutor about the total number of prosecution witnesses and how many of them had their statements recorded. “There are a total of 110 prosecution witnesses, out of them nine have been recorded. While the 10th was being recorded when the judges were transferred,” the prosecutor replied.

Senator Tarar and Amjad Pervez argued that NAB had completely failed in establishing any connection of Shehbaz Sharif’s with any sort of criminality. They implored that NAB does not have even a single prosecution witness on record who testified against the PML-N leader’s criminality.

They further argued that NAB connected assets belonging to members of Shehbaz Sharif’s family with him, claiming that these assets were under his control though they were not. They argued that all family members were independent and had control on their assets. Shehbaz Sharif’s counsels completed their arguments during the hearing.

The bench directed NAB’s Special Prosecutor Syed Faisal Raza Bukhari to begin his arguments on Thursday (today).

The case pertaining to Shehbaz Sharif’s bail plea was earlier heard by a division bench headed by Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar. Initially, the bail was allowed but later the other member of the bench, Justice Asjad Javed Ghural, denied signing the bail order and gave a dissenting note. The matter was later sent to LHC Chief Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan who then constituted a three-member bench to hear the matter.