ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) will take up on Monday a petition seeking to put the name of former chief judge of Gilgit Baltistan, Justice (retd) Rana Shamim on the Exit Control List (ECL).
Chief Justice Athar Minallah will hear the petition filed by Advocate Rai Nawaz Kharal.
The petitioner stated that the ex-GB judge served as an office-bearer of the PML-N Sindh chapter. The previous PML-N government appointed Rana Shamim as the chief judge of Gilgit Baltistan, he claimed.
He apprehended that ex-CJ Shamim might flee abroad, pleading that his name be put on the no-fly list.
The petitioner filed a separate application seeking to become a party to the contempt of court proceedings against the former GB judge and others.
It is pertinent to mention here that the IHC initiated the contempt of court proceedings against Rana Shamim after he alleged in a notarised affidavit that former chief justice Saqib Nisar had directed a high court judge to not release ex-PM Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz on bail at any cost before the 2018 general elections.
Rana Shamim asked to arrange
delivery of affidavit at embassy
Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Khalid Jawed Khan asked Rana Shamim, the former chief judge of Gilgit-Baltistan, on Friday to arrange the delivery of his ‘original affidavit’ to the Pakistan High Commission in London.
The publication of the ex-judge’s purported affidavit in The News last month kicked up a political storm as it claimed that former chief justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar had asked a judge of the Islamabad High Court to ensure that Nawaz Sharif and his daughter were not released from jail before the 2018 general election.
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) is due to resume on Dec 7 a contempt hearing arising out of the newspaper report against Rana Shamim, editor-in-chief of Jang Group Mir Shakeelur Rehman, Aamir Ghouri, the editor of The News, and Ansar Abbasi, who authored the report.
In his one-page letter, the AGP asked Rana Shamim to arrange the delivery of his affidavit to the Pakistan High Commission in London “at the earliest” so that it could be forwarded to the IHC registrar through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The High Court had observed that in case the original affidavit was not produced on the due date, it would raise an assumption of its non-existence.
The AGP forwarded a copy of his letter to Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary and the country’s High Commissioner in London.