A two-member bench, consisting of IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, announced the verdict reserved a day earlier after the conclusion of arguments from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prosecutor and Sardar Latif Khan Khosa who represented Imran Khan.
The court approved the bail against surety bonds worth Rs1 million. However, the PTI founder shall not be released from prison as he is still serving out his sentences in two cipher and iddat cases.
On Tuesday, the IHC reserved its verdict on the bail petition filed by former prime minister and PTI founder Imran Khan.
Sardar Latif Khosa, represented the PTI founder, while Amjad Parvez appeared on behalf of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
The chief justice inquired when Al-Qadir Trust was registered, to which lawyer Amjad Pervez said that it was registered on December 26, 2019 having four trustees including founder PTI Imran Khan as chairman, Bushra Bibi, Babar Awan and Zulfi Bukhari as members.
Amjad Pervaiz said that on April 22, 2020, the chairman of the trust wrote to the sub-registrar of the trust that Babar Awan and Zulfi Bukhari were no longer the trustees. On which the court again asked where the trust was registered. The NAB counsel replied that it was registered in Islamabad.
On his turn, NAB’s special prosecutor informed the court that 39 out of 59 witnesses had given their statements in the case, 6 to 8 more witnesses shall get their statements recorded while 10 prosecution witnesses had been abandoned.
He argued that if the case was in the final stage, a direction was given to the trial court to decide the case expeditiously instead of hearing a bail petition.
After the NAB prosecutor’s arguments, Sardar Latif Khosa argued that a NAB witness had admitted that there was no signature of the PTI founder on the documents and that no money had been given to the PTI founder or his wife Bushra Bibi while no money had been transferred to her bank account.
Khosa told the court that a prosecution witness had admitted in his statement that neither the PTI founder nor Bushra Bibi took any personal benefit from the deal while the NAB had not at any stage declared its own witness’ statement against the accountability watchdog,
After hearing the arguments of both the parties, the Islamabad High Court reserved its decision on the bail application in the £190 million NAB reference.
During the previous hearing, the NAB prosecutor argued that an Asset Recovery Unit (ARU) was established which was directly reported to then prime minister and its office was also in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat. He added that a letter was written by the ARU to the National Crime Agency regarding Malik Riaz’s money laundering cases.
The chief justice said that the formation of the Unit had been seen in the case of Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa. The NAB prosecutor said that Malik Riaz bought One Hyde Park property in the UK from Hassan Nawaz. Upon that, Latif Khosa asked the lawyer to also tell whose son was Hassan Nawaz? The NAB prosecutor replied that everyone knew about it. He added that no action was taken against Hassan regarding this property in the United Kingdom.
The chief justice remarked that the ARU was formed by the prime minister and the court was not questioning the legality of this institution, rather they just want to understand the matter.
After hearing the arguments, the court had reserved the verdict.
