Court declares plea against Imran’s Nikah inadmissible

ISLAMABAD: Senior Civil Judge Nasar Minallah Baloch has declared inadmissible a plea that former prime minister Imran Khan’s marriage with Bushra Bibi was illegal.

The court announced its reserved decision on the case here on Saturday.

Earlier, the court had reserved its decision and later announced that the plea was inadmissible.

In its decision, the court said that the matter of marriage during the period of iddat was beyond its jurisdiction. The application, according to the court, was inadmissible and fell outside its jurisdiction, as it entailed the case of Nikah during iddat.

The petitioner’s lawyer, Raja Rizwan Abbasi, argued why Imran Khan had remarried Bushra Bibi if their marriage was legal. He asserted that marriage during iddat was “illegal.”

“It is fraudulent to say that you will become prime minister if you get married on the first day of 2018,” he said, continuing his arguments. “In January 2018, Bushra Bibi was in iddat. The divorce had taken place in November,” Abbasi added.

“Imran Khan’s marriage took place in Lahore. How does this court have jurisdiction?” the judge asked.

The lawyer responded by saying that the fraud had begun at Bani Gala in Islamabad, and the Nikah officiator was also taken from Islamabad. “In February 2018, Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi’s Nikah was again officiated.”

During the hearing of the case earlier this month, former PTI leader Aun Chaudhry had said Imran Khan’s third marriage ceremony and wedding with the former first lady were based on fraud and claimed that the PTI chief had divorced Reham Khan through an email on Bushra Bibi’s advice.

Chaudhry, who is the adviser to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on sports and tourism, said that Bushra told Imran Khan that if he married her, he would become the prime minister. He also claimed Imran was aware that Bushra Bibi’s iddat had not ended but they still got married.

He also spoke about arranging Imran Khan’s wedding ceremony at his request. “Mufti Saeed had asked Bushra Bibi for the divorce certificate in front of me at the time of marriage. When the news of the marriage broke during Eidul Fitr, the ceremony was redone on February 18.”

The alleged un-Islamic nikkah of Imran and Bushra Bibi was brought to light by a petition filed by one Muhammad Hanif. Mufti Saeed, the cleric who solemnised the couple’s marriage, had claimed that the initial ceremony was not conducted under Islamic Sharia law.

He had also mentioned having a positive relationship with Imran Khan being a member of his core committee. He had said that he was taken by Imran Khan to Lahore’s DHA to officiate the couple’s Nikah in 2018.