LONDON: PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz will reach London on Wednesday (today) to reunite with her father PML-N Supremo Nawaz Sharif, who left Pakistan for the UK on medical grounds in 2019 and has remained there ever since.
The development comes a day after Maryam’s passport was returned by the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) office of the deputy registrar (judicial) in light of directives issued by a full bench. The court had directed officials to return her passport which she had surrendered in 2019 in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case.
It also comes after Maryam’s conviction in the Avenfield apartments reference was overturned by the Islamabad High Court, which now paves the way for her to contest any upcoming election.
“I am eager to meet my beloved father,” Maryam told reporters as she arrived at the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore. The PML-N leader said she was “thankful to Almighty Allah that I am finally going to meet my father”. “I cannot wait for my plane to land and to meet my father,” she said.
Talking to reporters, her husband, retired Captain Mohammad Safdar, said Maryam would look after her father in London and also supervise his medical treatment.
“She will also hold detailed discussions on the current political situation,” Safdar added.
Maryam was first placed on the Exit Control List (ECL) in the Al Azizia Steel Mills reference while her name was added to the no-fly list again in 2020 in connection to the investigation in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case.
Her name was struck off the ECL in April this year after the government introduced significant changes to the rules controlling citizens’ exit from the country in an attempt to end the practice of keeping people on the no-fly list for years and even for over a decade.
Earlier, on the way, she stopped at Doha to meet his son and daughter-in-law and reportedly will reach to London accompanied them.
Maryam gets passport
PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday received her passport from the office of the deputy registrar (judicial) of the Lahore High Court in the light of a direction issued by a full bench the other day.
Maryam visited the LHC office along with her counsel and party leaders to fulfill the process to get her passport back.
The full bench headed by Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti also issued its written order on her petition. Justice Ali Baqar Najafi and Justice Tariq Saleem Sheikh were the other members of the bench.
Allowing the petition of Maryam, the bench noted that the court, in view of the opinion of the deputy prosecutor of the NAB, was left with no option except to allow the application.
The bench withdrew the condition of surrendering the passport mentioned in the 2019 bail granting order with a direction to the deputy registrar (judicial) to return the passport(s) to the petitioner forthwith after due verification. In November 2019, a two-member bench of the LHC had granted a post-arrest bail to Ms Sharif in the case, observing that the ‘bail cannot be withheld as a punishment’.
The bench had asked Ms Sharif to furnish Rs10 million surety bonds, with two sureties each in the like amount to the satisfaction of the trial court. She was also ordered to deposit an amount of Rs70m with the court ‘to establish her bona fide’ and submit her passport as the prosecution feared she might flee the country. NAB had arrested Maryam Nawaz Sharif in August 2019 when she went to Kot Lakhpat jail to see her incarcerated father, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Maryam Nawaz was arrested by the National Accountability Bureau on August 8, 2019 in the Chaudhary Sugar Mills case. Later, on September 25 that year, she was sent to jail on judicial remand by an accountability court in Lahore.
On November 4, 2019, a LHC bench had granted her post-arrest bail but directed her to surrender her passport as the NAB feared she could flee the country.