The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) will be filing a review petition with the apex court for reopening of the Hudaibiya Papers Mill case, a private news outlet reported on Friday.
According to the outlet, the senior leadership of both the parties recently reached an agreement about requesting a review for reopening of the case either through separate petitions or through a joint one.
In his recent speech, PPP leader Aitzaz Ahsan also raised the issue and hinted at the review petition. He said that according to the law, the case can be reopened at any given time. Sources said that Ahsan was specifically directed by PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari to address this issue.
The Sharif family breathed a sigh of relief on December 15 after the Supreme Court dismissed the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) appeal to reopen Hudaibiya Paper Mills case – known as the mother of all corruption cases against Sharifs – by declaring it not maintainable.
The top court’s three-member bench – comprising Justice Mushir Alam, Justice Qazi Faez Isa and Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel – rejected NAB’s appeal against the order of a divisional bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC), which in 2014 had quashed the graft reference.
Although the 17-year-old Hudaibiya Paper Mills case has been in the headlines for the last one year, the three-member bench took only four hearings to conclude that the case could not be reopened and that it was an ‘income tax’ case rather than that of ‘money laundering’.