Imran’s plea against Shehbaz’s defamation suit dismissed

LAHORE: A miscellaneous application by PTI Chairman Imran Khan seeking the dismissal of a Rs10 billion defamation suit filed against him by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was rejected by a district and sessions court in Lahore on Friday.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Muhammad Irfan Basra issued the decision, saying that the petitioner’s reply was not in accordance with the legal procedure.

The court order further indicated that Imran Khan had lost the right to defend himself since the decision of November 24, 2022. The court observed that Imran Khan had filed a miscellaneous application to waste the court’s time, and the reply should have been submitted only under the legal procedure, which was not followed.

The defamation suit was filed by Shahbaz Sharif in 2017, alleging that Imran Khan had made false and malicious statements against him and that Sharif had offered Rs10 billion to him through a common friend in exchange for withdrawing the Panama Papers’ case pending before the Supreme Court.

The suit pleaded that Imran Khan’s “baseless and defamatory statements” had caused severe damage to Sharif’s reputation and caused him “extreme mental torture, agony, and anxiety.”

The court was requested to issue a decree for the recovery of Rs. 10 billion as compensation for the publication of defamatory content in favor of the plaintiff.