ISLAMABAD, Feb 19: National Accountability Bureau Chairman Admiral (retd) Fasih Bokhari toned down his tirade against the judiciary in a reply he submitted to the Supreme Court on Tuesday to answer the contempt charges.

The NAB chief praised Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for the role he had played for independence of the judiciary and held the media, and not himself, responsible for committing contempt of court.

The reply read out by his counsel Navid Rasul Mirza before a three-judge bench hearing the contempt case stated that the communication between him and President Asif Ali Zardari was privileged.

Admiral Bokhari is facing the contempt charges for writing a strongly-worded letter to the president accusing the superior judiciary of influencing NAB’s investigation into the rental power projects scam.

The court office had on Feb 16 returned his application in which he had accused the bench of bias and that he already stood condemned. The office refused to entertain the application on grounds that it was meant to scandalise the judiciary.

The reply submitted on Tuesday recalled that Admiral Bokhari, after retirement as navy chief, took part in the movement for reinstatement of the chief justice in 2007. It stated that Admiral Bokhari could not think of and did not intend to commit contempt of court. It was the media which had committed the contempt, it said.

The reply held the Jan 27 letter to the president as a confidential communication/ report made by him as administrative head of NAB on his personal letterhead to his appointing authority and said he owed a statutory responsibility of submitting an annual report to the president.

The letter, the NAB chief explained, was meant only for the president, and not for the media, expressing ignorance how the media got hold of it.

He said he himself had released contents of the letter to the media later to avoid misrepresentation when reporters outside the Supreme Court requested for a copy.

Admiral Bokhari said he had extracted a copy of the letter from his laptop and allowed the bureau’s media wing to release it to the press, but only when the entire content of the letter had been known to the media by then.

The chief justice recalled that Dr Tahirul Qadri was let off the hook by the Supreme Court because he had committed contempt by accusing the chief justice only and not the entire judiciary, while the NAB chairman had committed contempt of the entire judiciary.

He regretted that footage of the letter was shown by television channels and thus the entire judiciary was maligned.

By releasing the letter, Justice Gulzar Ahmed said, the NAB chairman himself had aggravated the situation.

“This letter has dragged the institution of judiciary into politics,” the chief justice observed. He adjourned the proceedings to Wednesday.