ISLAMABAD: Priva­tisation Minister Daniyal Aziz on Tuesday denied committing the contempt of court and said he had always strived for the independence of judiciary.

“I have always respected and spent my lifetime for the independence of the judiciary,” the minister told a three-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by Jus­tice Sheikh Azmat Saeed, hearing the contempt of court case against him.

“The articles ensuring separation of executive from the judiciary remained unimplemented until amendments were made to the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) between 1999 and 2000,” Mr Aziz told the court, alluding to the period when he was a member of the federal cabinet during the government of former president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf.

Minister tells SC he has always strived for independence of judiciary

“For these reasons I deny that I committed the contempt of the court,” the minister said in reply to a question asked by Prosecutor Additional Attorney General Muhammad Waqar Rana whether he considered his statement of Dec 19, 2017, which was telecast by Dawn News as evidence against him for committing the contempt of court.

When Mr Aziz was asked about the statement he had issued on Dec 19, the minister said he could not reply to the question since the video clip, also shown in the Supreme Court through the multi-media facility, was mostly “peeped out”.

Executive Producer of Dawn News Kashif Jabbar, the defence witness, conceded that the event in which Mr Aziz was shown making statements considered to be contemptuous was the recording of a private function of the PML-N held on Dec 19 at the Punjab House, Islamabad, for which Dawn News had received no separate invitation for the coverage.

Defence counsel Ali Raza representing the minister told the court that the video clip was an embedded video, recorded through a mobile phone.

When asked whether the video clip was edited, Mr Jabbar replied that contents of the video were not edited.

During his cross-examination, Mr Jabbar was also not certain when asked about the press conference of Mr Javed Hashmi telecast by Dawn News on Jan 1, 2017, and said he had to check it from the records.

The Jan, 1, 2017, clip related to the media talk of Mr Hashmi in which he had alleged that some disgruntled elements of armed forces wanted to make former army chief Gen Raheel Sharif unsuccessful and through PTI chief Imran Khan, they wanted to destroy the parliament. At the last hearing on April 16, the Supreme Court had rejected the request of Mr Raza to summon Director General of (Monitoring) Pemra Haji Adam and produce the video clip of Mr Hashmi.

The court postponed further proceedings of the contempt case till May 3.

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2018