RAWALPINDI: An accountability court on Sunday approved eight-day physical remand each for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder and former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi in a fresh corruption case.
The order comes less than a day after the PTI founder and his wife were acquitted in the Don't know or illegal marriage case, but their hopes of getting out of prison were dashed when the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested them in a fresh Toshakhana reference.
Additional Sessions Judge Muhammad Afzal Majoka had a day earlier quashed the couple's conviction in which they were sentenced to seven years in prison and fined Rs 500,000 each after a trial court found their nikah fraudulent when Khawar Maneka, Bushra's ex-husband, moved the court against the couple's marriage.
However, soon after the verdict overturning their conviction, a team of the anti-graft watchdog headed by deputy director Mohsin Haroon arrested the couple from Adiala jail in the fresh reference related to alleged “abuse of power to procure gifts from Toshakhana”.
The PTI, after securing a key legal victory after a 13-member bench of the Supreme Court declared the party eligible for allotment of reserved seats, was looking forward to the release of its founder, which, if it happened, would have given a major boost to the erstwhile ruling party.
However, the accountability court today ordered the NAB to interrogate the two suspects in Adiala Jail and also ordered to produce the couple before the court on July 22.
Khan's lawyer Zaheer Abbas Chaudhary, while speaking to reporters, said that the NAB had sought 14-day physical remand for the PTI founder and Bushra.
Chaudhary said they were opposed to physical remand, arguing that they had commitments in the £190 million reference.
The lawyer said the arrest of the former prime minister and his wife was against the law and added that their bail plea was already being heard in the Supreme Court.
PTI founder's legal troubles
Khan has been behind bars since August last year after being sentenced in the Toshakhana criminal case and subsequently sentenced in other cases ahead of the February 8 elections.
While the former prime minister has been granted bail in several May 9 cases registered in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad, an anti-terrorism court (ATC) last week cancelled his bail in one of the May 9 cases registered against him and thousands of his supporters in connection with the violence against the army and other state installations that erupted following his brief arrest in May 2023.
In June, the Islamabad High Court overturned Khan's conviction on charges of leaking state secrets in the Cipher case, in which he was given a 10-year prison sentence on charges of making public a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan's ambassador to Washington in 2022.
In addition, former Prime Minister Khan was sentenced to imprisonment (one for 14 years and the other for three) in two cases related to the illegal acquisition and sale of state gifts. Both sentences were suspended by higher courts pending the resolution of his appeals; however, the conviction in both cases still stands.
But to continue…
