Sharif family unlikely to get any relief from SC review bench
Shares
ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court has observed that the three-member bench was constituted to implement the April 20 verdict, which ceased to exist soon after the completion of an investigation by the JIT. Thus, the five-judge bench was to decide the case in light of the JIT report, they added.
All five judges unanimously disqualified Sharif, though the grounds on which he was disqualified may have been different, observed Justice Khosa. He said the two judges, who had given the dissenting note, didn’t add anything in the July 28 verdict.
Harris contended his client was not afforded a fair hearing. The former prime minister should have been served a show-cause notice before dislodging him from office to explain his position, he added.
Assailing the bench’s decision to appoint a monitoring judge of the apex court to oversee proceedings against the Sharif family in accountability court, he said it was unprecedented and likely to influence the proceedings, depriving his client of right to fair trial.
Earlier on Tuesday, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Mian Saqib Nisar formed the five-judge bench on the recommendation of a three-judge bench that had taken up the application of Sharif to re-constitute a five-judge larger bench that had handed down the July 28 verdict.
On July 28, the apex court had disqualified Nawaz Sharif for not being honest for concealing his salary from a Dubai-based company and directed the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to file references against him and his children on the basis of the report of a joint investigation team that probed their off-shore properties.
Sharif had filed a set of review petitions challenging the verdict on the petitions filed by Imran Khan, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Sirajul Haq, requesting the court to review its judgment.