Rawalpindi:
In a significant development in the Toshakhana-2 affair involving a set of Bulgari jewelry which would have been preserved by the founder of PTI, Imran Khan, and his wife, Bushra Bibi, two key witnesses testified that the assessor had been in a hurry to undervalue the ornaments.
The case focuses on an expensive set of jewelry – a necklace, earrings, bracelets and rings – offered by the Saudi royal family to the former Prime Minister. According to the investigators, the whole was evaluated at an artificially low price, allowing Khan and his wife to buy it from a fraction of his real value, thus resulting in considerable loss to the national treasury.
The latest revelations occurred three days after a special central judge concluded the counter-examination of the two witnesses, the assessor Sohaib Abbasi and the former personal secretary of Imran Khan, Inamullah Shah.
The procedure, held inside Adiala prison, extended over six hours.
Abbasi told court that he had been responsible for enhancing the Bulgari on May 25, 2022 by the Cabinet division.
He said Shah visited him and revealed that the accused wanted to keep the whole, asking him to repair the evaluation at no more than 5 million rupees. According to Abbasi, Shah warned that the refusal would lead to his black list of ministries.
Under pressure, he said, he underestimated the whole and filed a false evaluation report.
Abbasi admitted during the testimony that he had joined the investigation on May 23, 2024 and asked for forgiveness for his role in the undervaluation.
Shah, in his own testimony, confirmed the story of Abbasi. He declared in court: “I asked Sohaib Abbasi to do a undervalued assessment of the whole, and he accepted.”
He added that he stayed in the abbasi office for 30 to 45 minutes during the process.
Shah also revealed that he had drawn double wages while serving both the PTI and the government. He explained that from 2019 to 2021, he held the post of controller at the Prime Minister’s house while receiving a salary from the central secretariat of the PTI.
He was finally withdrawn from his official position, not because of the two wages, but because of the disapproval of Bushra Bibi. According to him, she suspected that Shah’s brother had close ties to the head of the distant PTI Jahangir Tareen.
The case experienced several legal turns. In July 2023, an Islamabad court prevented the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) from continuing the reference to Toshakhana against Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi, transferring the case to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). It is now before a special central judge, who is also responsible for deciding on the deposit requests from Khan and his wife.
