LAHORE, April 14: An appellate bench of the Lahore High Court removed the office objection and admitted for regular hearing the bail application of Farrukh Karamat , the son of former army chief General Jehangir Karamat (retired), in the Emirates Bank fraud case.

The court also directed the office of the registrar LHC to place the application for early hearing before a bench. Earlier, the office had questioned the maintainability of the application observing that a local accountability court had declared the petitioner a proclaimed offender. The office had directed the petitioner to surrender first before the authorities concerned as only then he could move the Lahore High Court for bail.

The petitioner through his counsel Abid Hasan Minto moved another petition in which he challenged the objection of the office. The petitioner submitted that a banking court had acquitted him in the same case despite that the NAB filed a reference against him on the same charges and on his failure to appear before the trial court, the judge declared him a proclaimed offender.

PLEA DISPOSED: Lahore High Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Husain Chaudhry on Wednesday disposed of a petition of Naeemuddin Qamar Sahaf, a co-accused in Emirates Bank fraud case, who sought transfer of his case from one court to another.

Punjab Additional Advocate-General Akbar Tarar told the court that earlier the case was being heard by an accountability court judge who was transferred. He contended that there was a huge backlog of cases in the court of new judge Mian Subah Sadiq due to which he did not hope that trial of his case could be held within the time given by the LHC. -PPI