ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Fawad Chaudhry on Wednesday lashed out at the Sharif family, claiming that filing of review petitions is only an attempt to distract the Supreme Court from implementing the July 28 verdict.
While addressing the media, he said that the appeal is only intended to delay the filing of references by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) which have been given a deadline of six months of doing so.
He further alleged that the NAB is siding with the Sharif family.
Another PTI leader, Naeemul Haque, while also addressing the media, alleged that the NAB is using tactics to delay the filing of references against the Sharif family.
He further claimed that the PM secretariat in-charge is still accepting orders from Nawaz Sharif. Haque urged the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of this.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s three-member bench, headed by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan and comprising Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed and Justice Ijazul Ehsan, heard a plea submitted by the former prime minister’s children against the hearing of their review petitions by a three-member bench instead of a five-judge bench.
The judges are the same as those on the special implementation bench that supervised the work of the Panama case Joint Investigation Team (JIT).
During the hearing, the counsel for Nawaz’s children, Salman Akram Raja, pleaded the court to form a five-member bench to hear their review petitions. He also pleaded that their review petition against the judgment of the five-member bench be taken up first.
Justice Ejaz observed that the three-judge bench gave the majority verdict in the Panama Papers case and that the decision would not have been different had the three-judge bench given a verdict in the case. However, the bench accepted Raja’s plea and sent a request to the chief justice for the formation of a five-judge bench.
Later in the day, the five-judge bench was announced. It was to be headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and would include Justice Gulzar Ahmed as well as the three judges who were set to hear the case on Tuesday.
During the hearing, the counsel of Nawaz, Khawaja Harris, was also present and presented his arguments.