Who are eight persons that are in mind of SC?

ISLAMABAD: Not only lawyers and journalists in Courtroom No-3 were confused but the bar rooms and drawing rooms of the federal capital were also clueless about the eight persons who according to the information of the Panama Case Implementation Bench were indulging in propaganda against the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and the apex court. 

“There are eight persons who are doing propaganda in different talk shows against the JIT. When push comes to shove, we will pass an appropriate order,” observed Justice Ijazul Ahsan. 

The question arises as to using this team of eight persons to propagate against the JIT and the superior judiciary? Clearly, this observation only means that those who are facing the JIT, the ruling Sharif family, are using these people to make any such propaganda. The Implementation bench has to pen down a judgment, not observation, about the Sharif family. During the previous hearing Justice Ijazul Ahsan has remarked while discussing journalistic work and criticism in media, “Let us conclude this case and then we will sort them out”.

Under the constitution every person has the right to express his/her opinion on any issue of national importance while living within limits defined in the basic book. JIT should have only and fully concentrated on the task given to it instead of taping telephone calls of citizens, monitoring physical movements of witnesses before they appear before JIT or indulging into what someone is saying on media. It is apparent that such irrelevant things only reflect frustration or the failure to find out anything solid regarding the pending case. 

Many journalists and legal experts in apex court were shocked when they came to know on Monday that not a single complaint against JIT of any national institution, including that of the Prime Minister House, was taken up by the Implementation Bench. These complaints include expose of the name of the person, and the institution he belonged to, who leaked the picture of Hussain Nawaz to humiliate the PML-N leadership, taping of telephone calls of witnesses and its admission, monitoring of physical movements of the witnesses and harassing them. Not only this, NAB response termed JIT allegation of issuance of a show cause notice to a JIT member a while lie was not even discussed. Very strong observations were made against the most prestigious national institution of Intelligence Bureau (IB). The IB made a historic contribution to completely expose and foil a conspiracy against Pakistan and democracy in 2014. IB has termed wrong all allegations levelled against it by the JIT. It told the apex court that it has collected ground data of the JIT members as part of its routine and basic duty. 

The question arises, if nothing wrong is being done, what are fears because of which the IB and its normal and routine operations are being questioned.

‘Who are those eight people’ was the basic question boggling many minds in the country this time. In its 120 pages complaint filed before the apex court, the JIT has named 37 politicians, 31 journalists, analysts, anchors or media persons and 16 legal experts (some with multiple entries) who appeared in different talk shows and made remarks about JIT or the judiciary. These numbers add up to 84. There were several news items, columns, tweets, Facebook posts and even a WhatsApp Group message. One wonders who are these eight persons in mind of the Panama Implementation Bench.