.
Police officers walk past the Supreme Court of Pakistan building in Islamabad, Pakistan April 6, 2022. REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a plea by PTI founder Imran Khan’s lawyer to arrange a meeting with his client during the proceedings in the Toshakhana case. The court also issued a notice to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in the matter.
A three-member bench — headed by Justice Hashim Khan Kakar and comprising Justice Salahuddin Panhwar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim — heard several petitions related to Imran, including requests for cancellation of bail in the cipher case, the Toshakhana case and the defamation case.
When Imran’s lawyer Latif Khosa requested the court to facilitate a meeting between himself and Imran Khan, Justice Kakar firmly refused saying that the politicians had already taken away the power of judges suo motu.
“How can we order a hearing in a criminal case? Political matters should be taken to parliament, not taken up here in court,” he said. Justice Panhwar also asked how the court could issue orders on a case that had not even been determined before it.
The hearing saw an amusing and somewhat unusual exchange when Khosa, while claiming that Imran’s three-year jail term in the Toshakhana-I case had been suspended but not the sentence itself, inadvertently cited an SC ruling contradicting his own position.
Khosa argued that while the Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) two-member bench had suspended the sentence, the sentence itself had not been suspended — and this distinction prevented the PTI founder from contesting elections despite the suspension.
Justice Kakar questioned this reasoning: “If a sentence is suspended in an appeal, there should be no bar – including to contest elections. When a sentence is suspended, the person goes free. Please read the relevant order of the high court.”
When Khosa read aloud the relevant section of the IHC order, Justice Kakar pointed out that he had only sought suspension of the sentence from the IHC and that the court had granted exactly what he had asked for.
When Khosa cited a 2019 SC judgment in support of his argument, Justice Kakar asked him to read paragraph 13 of that particular judgment. It then became clear that in that case both the sentence and the sentence had been suspended simultaneously – the opposite of what Khosa claimed. The courtroom erupted in laughter.
