Justice Khosa never met or talked to Imran: SC

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday clarified that the senior judge of the apex court, Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, never met or talked to Imran Khan in any private capacity throughout his life and had no personal acquaintance with him.

A statement issued by the Registrar’s Office stated that it was being insinuated in some sections of the social, print and electronic media that in a recent interview with a television channel, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan had stated that he had been asked by Honourable Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa to file a petition before the Supreme Court in connection with the Panama Papers scandal.

“The allegation is absolutely unfounded and completely untrue,” the statement said adding that the interview itself refers to some observations made in the courtroom during a judicial proceeding.

It said that the fact of the matter is that on November 1, 2016 many constitutional petitions pertaining to the said scandal were fixed for hearing before a Larger bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the then chief justice, Anwar Zaheer Jamali, and Justice Khosa was also part of that 5-member bench.

When the hearing of the matter came to a close on that day, Justice Khosa addressed the learned counsel for the parties and observed in open court to the effect that now that the court sitting at the apex of the dispute resolution mechanisms in the country had taken cognizance of the matter, the parties would be well advised to “hold their horses” and reconsider their positions regarding the call for lockdown of Islamabad, planned for the next day which was likely to cause extreme hardship to the citizens at large.

It appears that those observations were accorded due deference and the lockdown of Islamabad was called off and all the major television channels in the country had reported the said observations on the same day and all the major newspapers had reported those observations on the following day, i.e. November 2, 2016 and this is a matter of record and hundreds of people, including scores of politicians, journalists and media persons, attending the court on that day may confirm that factual position.

“Justice Khosa has never met or talked to Mr Imran Khan in any private capacity throughout his life and has no personal acquaintance with the gentleman,” says the statement. It said that the relevant constitutional petitions had been filed before the Supreme Court by different petitioners many months prior to Nov 1, 2016. The twist given to some of the words used in the interview mentioned above is, therefore, malicious and unfortunate, the Registrar Office said.