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LAHORE, June 24: The Pakistan Lawyers Forum refiled its habeas corpus petition for production of PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif on Thursday after removing the objections raised by the Lahore High Court registrar's office.
PLF president Advocate A.K. Dogar moved the LHC on June 22 seeking an injunction for the federal government to produce Mr Sharif in a court of competent jurisdiction so that he could secure his bail.
The registrar office returned the petition on Thursday and the petitioner filed it afresh in a few hours stating that since Mr Sharif was "abducted" from Lahore on May 11, the Lahore High Court was competent to hear the petition.
Advocate Dogar cited the case of Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi (PLD 1975 SC 66) in support of his argument that Shahbaz Sharif was forcibly removed from Lahore airport, and the high court still had the jurisdiction to take up the petition.
Zahoor Elahi was removed from Lahore to Kohlu in Balochistan and the Supreme Court decreed in its judgment in 1975 that it still had the jurisdiction to hear the case. The PLF stated in his petition that Mr Sharif was in the illegal custody of the rulers who removed him from the airport with force.
The act amounted to abduction under sections 352 and 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code. The LHC dismissed last week a petition by the PLF, heard as an objection petition, upholding the office objection that the PLF had no locus standi to raise in any manner the question of Shahbaz Sharif.
NAB: A division bench of the Lahore High Court on Thursday directed the deputy prosecutor-general of the National Accountability Bureau to appear in person to explain why the wife of an accused was arrested.
Accountability court No III judge Rana Zahid on June 17 remanded in judicial custody Mehreen Haroon Ahmad, the wife of Haroon Ahmad of a forex company, the Rauf International. The NAB allegedly arrested her on failing to apprehend her husband on fraud charge.
The company is among several firms which had been dealing in foreign exchange and deprived a large number of depositors of their huge investments. Mehreen Haroon submitted in her writ petition that no law of the land allowed the arrest of persons who were facing no criminal charges.
The arrest of relatives for the offence of other family members was against the legal and moral norms. Barrister Syed Ali Zafar submitted before the court that the NAB decision to arrest the petitioner for her husband violated basic principles of justice and was arbitrary and unlawful.
He contended that the charges against Haroon Ahmad were yet to be adjudicated and the arrest of his wife, who had a suckling baby, was a draconian step by all standards.
