ISLAMABAD, June 24: Pakistan People’s Party has served a legal notice on Ad Hoc Public Accounts Committee Chairman H.U. Beg, asking him to immediately withdraw “defamatory, scandalous and malicious imputations amounting to blackmail, failing which the party will have no option but to initiate criminal and civil proceedings against you.”

The legal notice signed by Supreme Court Advocate Dr Babar Awan on behalf of Naheed Khan, political secretary to former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was delivered in the office of Mr Beg on Saturday.

The notice was prompted by the remarks of the PAC chairman before the press accusing Naheed Khan of bungling in the Baitul Mal funds. Mr Beg’s scathing criticism of Naheed Khan about misuse of funds was widely reported in the national press on June 20.

During the interim set up of president Farooq Leghari in 1996, a case was registered against Naheed Khan and it was held by the court while allowing her bail that the allegations were ill founded, the notice said and added that all subsequent inquiries also had upheld the judicial finding.

The notice said that after a lapse of six years no charges were pressed against the PPP leader. “You are hereby further informed,” it said, “that you have no right to comment on matters sub judice or on matters decided by the courts.”