Plea to dismiss arrest warrant for ARY CEO rejected

 Justice Athar Minallah says interim order not issued to dismiss arrest warrant for Salman Iqbal

ISLAMABAD: In a case filed by Geo-Jang Group, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) has delayed the hearing of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) ARY Salman Iqbal next week after declining the appeal to dismiss his arrest warrant again. While Justice Athar Minhallah claimed that an interim order had not been issued to dismiss the arrest warrant for Salman Iqbal.

Independent Media Corporation (Geo-Jang Group) had filed a criminal case against CEO ARY Salman Iqbal for tarnishing name of their organisation on baseless grounds in the IHC.

After repeated calls and reminders, the CEO avoided to appear before the court due to which trial court had issued a bailable warrant for Salman Iqbal. Iqbal had taken a temporary stay order on the warrant by the IHC.

Later, the honourable court had solved the request by asking Salmab Iqbal to refer the related court. After the rejection of the concerned court regarding Iqbal’s request to review his arrest warrant, he pleaded for a review again, which was barred by the session court.

On this note, Salman Iqbal had taken a temporary stay notice from Islamabad High Court on May 27, 2016. Later, on June 30, September 27, and October 17, 2016, no lawyer appeared before the court on behalf of Salman Iqbal. Due to this reason, Justice Athar Minallah had dismissed the request on the basis of no follow-up. Following this, Salman Iqbal had filed a petition to reinstate his application, on which the judge of the honourable court issued a notice on October 24, 2016. 

On October 31, while reinstating Iqbal’s application, the court ordered Salman Iqbal to pay one thousand rupees in the bar funds as fine. The court had also ordered to provide evidences in the next hearing, mentioning that there would be no scope for delays now.

On November 7, 2016, Salman Iqbal’s lawyer’s junior lawyer pleaded the court to delay the hearing as Salman Iqbal couldn’t appear before the court due to his engagements with the Supreme Court.

On this note, the court delayed the hearing and made it clear that Salman Iqbal’s application was only approved to the extent of restoration. The court made it clear that the court had not granted a temporary stay on Iqbal’s arrest warrant.

When the hearing began on Tuesday, Salman Iqbal’s lawyer Faisal Hussain Chauhdry appealed to restore Salman Iqbal’s temporary stay notice, on which the Independent Media Corporation’s lawyer Advocate Amir Abdullah opposed this appeal. 

Hussain said that according to law a case’s decision should be made within 90 days. He said, however, there had been a lot of delays in the case for years due to delaying tactics employed by Salman Iqbal. He appealed, therefore, a temporary stay should not be extended.

On this note, Justice Athar Minallah rejected the to dismiss the arrest warrant of Salman Iqbal and delayed the hearing of CEO ARY Salman Iqbal to next week.