Weekly Pulse chief editor takes Justice Jawad S Khawaja to court

Editor-in-Chief of Weekly Pulse filed complaint, under Article 209 of the Constitution, against Justice Jawad S Khawaja who was heading a Special Bench of an apex court that had charged the magazine with contempt of court.
Editor-in-Chief Mohsin Jamil Baig furnished his complaint against the learned judge of the honourable court directly before the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) and also through the president. Sources in the Presidency said that the President Asif Ali Zardari had assured Baig that he would forward his complaint to the Supreme Judicial Council in due course.
According to details of the complaint, “With due respect to the learned judge and without attempting to ridicule or scandalise him in the least, the applicant genuinely believes that the contempt proceedings being conducted by the judge have been pre-empted by him to an extent that there is almost a nil chance of the applicant proving his innocence if the case is continued to be heard by him. Therefore appropriate action including voluntary recusal of the learned judge from the Bench is, inter alia, sought on the following grounds.”
The applicant cited as many as five grounds in his complaint against the judge. One of the grounds providing basis for the complaint against the judge under Article 209 of the Constitution claims that the learned judge ‘pressurise him to change his Counsel’.
Paramount ground for the complaint against the judge was the utterance of his own words in the open court. “Justice Khawaja expressed himself in categorical terms in open court and in the presence of dozens of media persons of established repute that the so-called counterfeit email address of Supreme Court used to deter a UK firm from making a statement against Dr Arslan Iftikhar in another pending contempt proceedings against Malik Riaz (former Chairman of Bahria Town) were ascribable to the applicant and that there was no doubt about the fact”.