NAB tells IHC: Sharifs convicted on basis of conclusive presumption

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Saturday told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that the petitions filed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and her husband Captain (retd) Safdar, seeking the deferment of Avenfield reference verdict, were not maintainable and so should be dismissed.

The “NAB begs with all humility that the instant writ petition is not maintainable before this division bench,” the NAB Deputy Prosecutor General Sardar Muzaffar Abbasi stated in one of the comments filed against Sharifs’ petitions before the IHC. The NAB prosecutor said Sharifs were convicted in the Avenfield apartments’ reference by the accountability court on July 6 on the basis of “conclusive presumption”. “The irrefutable and conclusive presumption for establishing conviction has been essentially adhered (to) by the learned accountability court,” he stated, adding the judgment, in lieu of the circumstances of the case, did not merit to be suspended. While raising objections on the formation of the division bench, Muzaffar Abbasi said the division bench formed to hear the writ petition is the sole prerogative of the high court’s chief justice but the petitioner is required to make such a request to the chief justice. In the present matter, he said, no such exercise has been done by the petitioner, therefore, the petitions are not maintainable before the bench. The NAB termed most of the petitioners’ contents in the petitions “controverted”.

Muzaffar Abbasi further maintained that the documentary evidence adduced along with the ocular examination duly recorded by the trial court emphatically established the prosecution case, adding each and every objection on the receivability, relevancy, production and admissibility of documentary evidence was clearly stretched by the trial court.