Court exempts Zardari from appearance for one day

RAWALPINDI: Former president Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday again failed to appear before the accountability court, Rawalpindi which had summoned him in a corruption case regarding submitting incorrect details of his assets.
Hundreds of PPP supporters returned back from Rawalpindi district court without seeing their leader as Zardari did not appear due to health reasons.Zardari’s lawyer Farooq H Naek told the accountability court judge Khalid Mehmood Ranja that his client had travelled to Islamabad for the hearing, but could not appear before the court due to ill health.
Naek said the former president was suffering from a bout of food poisoning. The court accepted Zardari’s exemption from attending the court for one day and adjourned the hearing till May 13. The court asked Zardari to appear on next hearing at any cost. “Asif Zardari came to Islamabad from Karachi yesterday. I met him last night and was with him for an hour. We discussed the case and I told him the court had set the time for the hearing at 11:00am,” Naek told reporters after the meeting.
“This morning he called me and said that he was suffering from food poisoning, vomiting and was also having fever. He asked me to plead to the court to pardon him for not being able to appear on Tuesday due to ill health,” he said.
Speaking about the reference, Naek said his client had been implicated in a false case. He said that Zardari has previously faced the courts and will appear before the courts to face legal proceedings again. This is the second time that Zardari has failed to appear before the Rawalpindi accountability court since the five-year-old reference was reopened last month.