LONDON: London Metropolitan Police registered a case against unknown men who stole Nasir Butt’s car. Butt is the central character in accountability judge Arshad Malik’s video scandal.
The police confirmed that Nasir Butt filed a complaint of theft and his life was under threat from unknown men. Butt also mentioned that he has noticed unidentified men monitoring his house, his movements and also following his children to schools and in markets.
Butt had returned to London from Pakistan on July 2, 2019 after allegedly secretly filming judge Arshed Malik over several months in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
In the video released on July 7 by Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the former accountability court judge, who had convicted Nawaz Sharif, was seen confessing that he was blackmailed and put under severe pressure to jail the former prime minister.
The CCTV video shows two masked men entering the gated area of Nasir Butt’s house in Ealing, West London wearing masks and gloves, that entirely concealed their identity. The two men were seen standing behind the Range Rover and taking out some equipment, presumably the decoders often used by car thieves and professional criminals who steal expensive cars.
One of the two men is then seen pulling out a key and successfully unlocking the door of the vehicle. He can then be observed struggling for about a minute till he was able to start the car and within seconds the two were seen in the footage driving away. The whole operation spanned over less than three minutes.
Addressing a press conference in Lahore on July 7, Maryam Nawaz, the daughter of 69-year-old former premier, said that her father’s entire judicial process was severely compromised.
Nawaz Sharif was jailed after the accountability court convicted him in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills case, one of the three corruption cases filed in the wake of the apex court’s July 28, 2017 order in Panama Papers case.
Judge Arshad Malik, who sentenced Sharif to seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia corruption case, confessed in his conversation with PML-N supporter Nasir Butt that he was “blackmailed and forced” to give verdict against the former premier.
The video shows the judge speaking to Butt and claiming that he was coerced to hand down the prison sentence against Sharif despite there being no proof of corruption against him.
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has directed Nasir Butt to join investigation in Pakistan but he said that the PTI government will hound him and he will be denied justice.
Butt has obtained two forensic reports of the video, both reports confirming that the videos of judge Arshed Malik are genuine and not doctored but Pakistan High Commission in London has refused to testify the forensic reports because of the Foreign Office’s consent that urged otherwise.
