The Lahore High Court (LHC) is hearing a petition challenging the government's condition of furnishing indemnity bonds in order to secure the removal of ailing former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's name from the Exit Control List (ECL).
At the outset of the hearing, the court asked if the federal government had submitted its written reply, to which the government's lawyer, Additional Attorney General (AAG) Chaudhry Ishtiaq A Khan, responded in the affirmative.
The court asked that a copy of the response be given to the petitioner's lawyer and told them that if they needed, they could take time to read the government's response.
Following this, the proceedings were briefly adjourned.
Ahead of the hearing, strict security arrangements were made. PML-N's legal team, as well as party leaders including Ahsan Iqbal, arrived in court.
A two-member bench of the court comprising Justice Ali Baqar Najafi and Justice Sardar Ahmad Naeem had taken up the petition on Thursday evening, the same day that a PML-N legal team submitted it. The court had issued notices to the federal government and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to submit a written reply by today.
Addressing a press conference yesterday, PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif had rejected the government's conditional decision to allow Nawaz to travel abroad for medical treatment, accusing the government of playing "dirty politics" on the former prime minister's health.
Shehbaz, during the presser, announced that the party's legal team had approached the LHC against the decision.
He said the government, by asking the PML-N to submit indemnity bonds to secure permission for Nawaz to travel abroad was, in fact, demanding "ransom" and the decision was not acceptable to the PML-N under any circumstances.
On Wednesday, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government, after much deliberation, had granted a one-time permission to Nawaz for four weeks to travel abroad for his treatment provided he submitted indemnity bonds worth over Rs7.5 billion.
The former prime minister had been rushed from Kot Lakhpat jail to the hospital last month after his personal physician Dr Adnan Khan raised an alarm over his deteriorating health. Following this, Shehbaz had submitted a request to the interior ministry as well as NAB for the removal of Nawaz's name from the ECL so that the former prime minister could travel abroad for medical treatment.
Nawaz, who was incarcerated after an accountability court found him guilty in the Al Azizia corruption reference, was granted bail by the Islamabad High Court on humanitarian grounds. He also obtained bail in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case, in which he is a suspect, from the LHC.
Meanwhile, in a statement, PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb, said on Friday that the Sharif medical board held a meeting. She said that doctors cautioned that if there was a further delay regarding Nawaz's health, it could prove to be deadly.
Thursday's court proceedings
A PML-N legal team led by Advocate Amjad Pervez filed the petition in the court as an urgent matter at around 3:15pm on Thursday with a request to condone the delay and fix it for a same-day hearing. Additional Attorney General (AAG) Chaudhry Ishtiaq A Khan and NAB’s special prosecutor Naeem Tariq Sanghera had appeared before the court as the petition was taken up around 4:30pm.
Advocate Pervez argued that the government’s condition of furnishing indemnity bonds to remove the name of the petitioner from the ECL was not based on any provision of the law. He said the condition had no legal standing since the petitioner had already been granted bail in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case by the LHC and his sentence in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills reference had been suspended by the IHC.
AAG Khan sought time to verify from the record when asked whether the impugned order of the government for indemnity bonds was a result of any consensus and whether the petitioner was placed on the ECL on the recommendations of Lahore or Islamabad office of NAB.
The law officer also sought time to file parawise comments on the petition, which the bench duly allowed. The bench asked the law officer to assist it in a legal point on whether the government had the power to put any condition for removing the name from the ECL if there was a court order.
source https://www.dawn.com/news/1516885/lhc-hears-plea-against-govts-condition-of-indemnity-bond-for-nawazs-travel
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