Imran Khan, the chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), requested post-arrest release in the cypher case, and the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday sent a notice to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) regarding this request.
IHC notifies FIA regarding Imran’s request for bail in the cypher case
Chief Justice Aamer Farooq of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) heard the PTI chairman’s bail request. Imran’s attorney, Salman Safdar, made an appearance.
In response to the PTI chairman’s lawyers’ repeated requests for an expedited hearing, the court stated that the process is in place and the bail application will be set by next Monday.
The petition was served with a notice from the court asking FIA to respond by the next hearing.
A special court had rejected the bail plea of the deposed prime minister, after which he approached the Islamabad High Court.
The PTI chairman is in jail on judicial remand till September 26. The special court has sought a challan from the FIA in the case. Earlier, the PTI chief, in his petition, stated that the prosecution had filed a malicious and fabricated case. He argued that the special court, made to hear cases related to the Official Secrets Act, “completely ignored several of the prosecution’s irregularities and contradictions”.
A written order by special court judge Abul Hasnat Zulqarnain stated that the missing cypher case was a top-secret case, and the prosecution had “irrefutable evidence against Imran Khan and [PTI leader] Shah Mahmood Qureshi to prove their connection to the case”.
The court noted that “sufficient incriminating evidence is available on record to connect the accused with the instant case”. “[The] record further depicts that there appear reasonable grounds for believing that the accused/petitioners are guilty of the offence [under] sections 5 and 9 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923 in the light of the content of the instant FIR [First Information Report].
Additionally, there are good reasons to think that the petitioners and accused have committed an offense that is not subject to bail. A seven-page written order stated that “the record which is in color of various documents is sufficient for the purpose of discarding the bails of both the accused.”
In the judgment, the court also observed that despite its instructions from September 11th, the petitioners’ attorneys failed to address any errors in a certificate’s footnote.
“As a result, this court is forced to deliberate on the merits of the immediate bail applications as well as on compliance with the court order. Therefore, both accused parties’ instant post-arrest bail applications are denied.
Before facing a vote of no confidence on March 27, 2022, former prime minister Imran Khan had produced a piece of paper from his pocket that was supposedly a diplomatic cipher and waved it in front of a crowd in Islamabad, claiming it was proof of a “international conspiracy” to overthrow his administration.
After the PML-N-led coalition government announced an official inquiry against the former PM and his close associates for violating the Official Secrets Act of 1923 for illegal possession of the classified document public, the FIA launched its investigation into the so-called “cypher-gate” on July 19, this year.
On August 19, the agency detained Qureshi, who had been the nation’s foreign minister throughout the PTI’s leadership.
Imran was detained on August 29 as reported by the agency.
