PESHAWAR: A local court on Thursday adjourned hearing into former MPA Fauzia Bibi’s defamation lawsuit against Prime Minister Imran Khan due to the absence of the latter’s lawyer, Babar Awan.

Additional district and sessions judge Shah Waliullah Hamid Hashmi fixed the next hearing for Nov 22.

Lawyer Enayatur Rehman appeared before the court on behalf of Babar Awan and said Mr Awan couldn’t attend the proceedings as he was busy with a case in the Supreme Court.

Imran Khan’s lawyer misses proceedings for being busy in SC

After holding several hearings into the case, the court had decided on Oct 24 to begin ex-parte proceeding against Prime Minister Imran Khan over his failure to respond to court summons despite being given repeated notices.

Mr Awan later submitted his power of attorney (wakalatnama) on behalf of the prime minister and requested the court to recall its order of conducting ex-parte proceedings against his client.

The court didn’t decide about the request on Thursday due to the absence of Mr Awan.

The plaintiff’s counsel, Syed Ghufranullah Shah, said he had no objection on that application as he wanted to contest the case on merit at the earliest.

The former MPA, who was elected on reserved seats for women on PTI’s ticket, has filed the lawsuit for the recovery of damages to the tune of Rs500 million from the premier for ‘defaming’ her through baseless allegations.

The lawsuit was filed in June this year under the Defamation Ordinance 2002.

The only defendant in the lawsuit is PTI’s chief Imran Khan, who subsequently became the prime minister.

Fauzia Bibi said in connection with her political services she had remained an MPA in the previous tenure from 2013-18 and she was also assigned the responsibility of parliamentary secretary for tourism.

The plaintiff said in the Mar 3 Senate polls, she had followed the party’s direction for voting for all its candidates nominated for general and reserved seats for women and technocrats.

She said after the Senate polls, defendant Imran Khan began uttering, spreading and resorting to publication, communication and circulation of maliciously false, baseless and unfounded oral statements and representation against her.

Fauzia Bibi said the defendant accused her of being involved in horse-trading by way of selling her vote for money, through all electronic, print and social media, which was broadcast on all TV and radio channels, uploaded and posted on social media and published in all leading newspapers.

She said no sooner did she receive information about the defamatory statement, she clarified her position by taking oath on the Holy Quran and denied the horse-trading allegations.

The plaintiff said acting on the directives of the defendant, the PTI Secretariat issued a show cause notice to her and that she replied to the notice within the stipulated time.

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2018