ISLAMABAD: The counsel for National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman retired Admiral Fasih Bokhari opposed a suggestion on Tuesday that Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry should hear a matter in which his son Dr Arsalan Iftikhar is called as a witness.

“Should the chief justice hear the case in which I will call Dr Arsalan as a witness,” Advocate Sardar Latif Khosa argued while pleading an intra-court appeal instituted by Admiral Bokhari before a five-judge bench comprising Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Mian Saqib Nisar, Ejaz Afzal Khan, Muhammad Ather Saeed and Iqbal Hameed-ur-Rehman.

The NAB chief is facing contempt charges for writing a letter to President Asif Ali Zardari on Jan 27 in which he accused the superior judiciary of influencing the bureau’s investigation into the rental power projects scam.

Admiral Bokhari in his appeal said that Arsalan Iftikhar, in an application submitted to the court, had accused him in a cruel and abrasive manner of being a person of ‘suspect past’ and alleged that he was on the payroll of Malik Riaz Hussain and his daughter used to work for Bahria Town.

The NAB chief said he had never reacted to such allegations despite the fact that hurt and humiliation caused was considerable.

A separate three-judge bench headed by the chief justice will frame contempt charges against Admiral Bokhari for scandalising the judiciary in his letter whenever it takes up the case.

Advocate Navid Rasul Mirza, who was earlier representing the NAB chief, had argued before the three-judge bench that his client had the reasons to believe that the chief justice was not favourably disposed towards him.

On Tuesday, Advocate Khosa argued that his request under section 11(3) of the Contempt of Court Ordinance 2003 for hearing the contempt case by a different bench minus the chief justice was justified. “This is a judicial contempt and any bench can hear the matter,” he said.

The section 11(3) suggests that in judicial contempt proceedings initiated by a judge or relating to a judge should not be heard by the said judge or in case of the chief justice the matter should be referred to the senior most judge available for disposal.

Advocate Khosa argued that the letter written confidentially by the NAB chairman did not fall within the ambit of article 204 of the constitution (contempt of court) and called for proceedings under the contempt of court ordinance. He said the leaked publication of the letter in the media through alleged surreptitious devices could not be attributed to his client.

The publication or airing of the contents of the letter warranted withdrawal of the contempt notice against the NAB chairman and called for an inquiry or action against the media personnel concerned if at all deemed necessary, the counsel argued. The court postponed the proceedings to April 11.