LHC asks Maryam…: Is there nobody to look after Nawaz in London?

By News desk

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday asked the counsel for Maryam Nawaz why she was insisting on going abroad.

“If her father is alone [in London] and nobody is there to take care of him,” asked the judge while hearing a petition, filed by Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) vice president, seeking removal of her name from the exit control list (ECL) and a one-time permission to travel abroad.

The lawyer replied that her father Nawaz Sharif was severely ill and being a daughter, it was her [Maryam Nawaz] right to look after him.

Justice Tariq Abbasi, one of the two-member LHC bench, told Maryam Nawaz that her blood relations were in London to attend to ailing Nawaz Sharif.

Amjad Pervez Advocate, counsel for Maryam Nawaz, stated that her client had lost her mother when she had to come to Pakistan from London to attend to a court hearing. The judge remarked that she herself had come to Pakistan leaving her mother on the death bed there.

The counsel requested the court to adjourn the hearing till Monday. However, the bench adjourned the case till the first week of February, with remarks that the court had a lot of cases of the poor to hear and dispose of. In her petition, Maryam contended that it was a known fact that her father was allowed to go abroad on account of his critical health condition. She said her father had not regained his health so far as he was still undergoing diagnosis process as per a medical report, filed with the court after duly attested by the Pakistan High Commission in London. The PML-N leader pleaded that she was in a dire need to go abroad to attend to her ailing father. She sought one-time permission to travel abroad. However, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) opposed the petition and return of passport to Maryam Nawaz, which she had surrendered to the court when the post-arrest bail was granted to her in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case.

The NAB prosecutor told the court that brothers of the petitioner and other family members were already in London to look after Nawaz Sharif.

On the last hearing, an additional attorney general had told the bench that the federal cabinet decided that the petitioner would not be allowed to go abroad.

However, the bench, on the complaint of petitioner’s counsel, asked the law officer to explain delay in deciding the representation of the petitioner.