LAHORE, July 15: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s son-in-law Capt Muhammad Safdar has been asked by Pakistan’s consulate in Jeddah to turn up on Saturday (today) to know if the government had conveyed any instructions about issuing passports to his father-in-law and mother-in-law. An application for passports had been submitted on July 2, but the government did not send any instructions either to the embassy in Riyadh or the consulate in Jeddah.

Capt Safdar visited the consulate several times only to be told that he should come again.

Fed up with the repeated fruitless visits, Mr Safdar wrote a letter to the consul-general complaining that no clear answer was being offered despite his visits. He also threatened that the applicants might go for a legal action against people who were failing in their duties.

Informed sources said on Friday that Capt Safdar had sent copies of his letter to the ministries of foreign affairs and interior. He also plans to inform the chief justice of Pakistan about the way the constitution was being violated by the Jeddah consulate.

Asked why the Saudi government was not being involved in the matter, the sources said that Mian Shahbaz Sharif had been given a passport without intervention from the Saudi authorities and the former prime minister was following the same course.