Islamabad:
A bench of the Supreme Court scored for having heard the calls filed by former Prime Minister Imran Khan against the dismissal of his requests for release under bond in the reissue affairs of May 9 by the High Court of Lahore (LHC).
A division bench including the chief judge of Pakistan (CJ) Yahya Afridi and judge Muhammad Shafi Siddiqui will take the calls – eight in total – at 9:30 am today (Tuesday).
An LHC division bench led by judge Shahbaz Ali Rizvi on June 24 judged that Imran would have been involved in the conspiracy to attack the military installations in the event of an arrest – a conspiracy, which, according to the government, was executed after the arrest of the founder of the PTI on May 9, 2023.
Imran Khan approached the Apex Court on July 26 against the LHC order, arguing that the accusation had adopted three different positions to connect it to the alleged conspiracy of May 9, 2023 reissue incidents, which were all rejected by various courts.
Commenting on the order, the petition said that the accusation had not repeatedly established any credible link between Imran Khan and the alleged occurrence as told in the FIR.
According to the petition, the accusation in its attempts to affect the petitioner to the alleged acts of conspiracy and complicity resorts to three contradictory versions, each differing in terms of date, time, location and alleged witnesses.
He declared that the three versions were judicially disbelieved either by the anti-terrorist courts (ATC) or by the LHC. He noted that during the release procedures under bond before the arrest before the ATC-III in Lahore, the accusation said late that a police manager Hassam Afzal would have heard a conspiracy in Zaman Park.
He said this event had taken place two days before May 9 – May 7. The accusation also said that another Asmat Kamal inspector heard the accounting of the chakri rest area five days before the event – May 4, 2023
“This version, however, was discredited due to the failure of the accusation to justify the delayed disclosure of this critical information and was therefore rejected by the learned ATC-III special judge in Lahore who confirmed the pre-arimed sureties of the petitioner on March 1, 2024 in FIR n ° 366/23 and 1078/23.”
The petition said that after the collapse of its first story, the accusation advanced a second version in the criminal review hearing before the LHC, saying that Imran Khan would have encouraged acts through media declarations.
However, the accusation could not produce any reprehensible or incriminating material to support this assertion, which led the LHC to also reject this version.
Subsequently, the State sought to rely on the declarations of three new witnesses – including the heads of PTI Sadaqat Abbasi and Wasiq Qayyum – as new evidence to support its third version of the plot.
“This last attempt was also found missing and was expressly disbelieved by the ATC-I, Rawalpindi, who discharged the co-accused Bushra Imran by an order well linked to 20.08.2024.
“The continuation of the accusation not to present coherent evidence, coherent and credible after multiple opportunities, clearly brought the case in the field of a more in-depth investigation, which makes the petitioner right to the concession of the post-arrest deposit under article 497 (2) of CRPC 1898”, he said.
The petition said that despite the rejection of the three versions of prosecutor by various competent forums, the LHC refused Imran’s surety while based solely on the declarations of the two police officials – Inspector Asmat Kamal and Asi Hassam Afzal.
