ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Marriyum Aurangzeb reacting to Imran’s tirade against the PML (N) government before flying from Chitral said that he was a living example of ‘a thief being boisterous about thieving’ and one wondered whom he was trying to befool by installing new plaque in his name on the projects initiated by others.
In a statement issued on Thursday, she said that deception with the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), absconding from courts of law and hurling fabricated allegations on others was the hallmark of Imran’s politics.
The minister said that Imran relished accusing others of corruption but he himself locked the Ehtsab Commission to cover up the corruption and lies of the PTI government in KP. Marriyum pointed out that installing a new plaque in Imran Khan’s name was costing the KP government five million rupees per day. The minister said that the federal government would have congratulated Imran if he had initiated a new project in the province and advised him to seek training from the Punjab Chief Minister as to how new project were launched.
Marriyum said that the anti-terrorism court in Islamabad “pronounced the name of Imran Niazi even today” and the lawyer of the fugitive again demanded exemption from ECP on his behalf, which was waiting for his reply in the foreign funding case for the last two-and-a-half years. She also asked Imran to reveal on whose helicopter he travelled from Chitral to Islamabad today.
On the other hand, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif is set to file a defamation suit in an Islamabad court against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan over his claim that the PML-N government had offered him Rs 10 billion to stay mum on the Panama leaks.
“The draft for the defamation suit has been prepared and it is likely to be filed in the sessions court today (Friday),” a senior official in the Punjab government said. “The chief minister has engaged Punjab’s former advocate general Mustafa Ramday to plead the case.” “The Punjab CM will claim Rs 10 billion in damages for allegedly lying and defaming his reputation,” he added.
Earlier, in May, Shahbaz through Advocate Khawaja Haris Ahmed had served a notice on Imran under Section 8 of the Defamation Ordinance, 2002. “Since the last week of April 2017, you [Imran] have been uttering/spreading and resorting to the publication and circulation, directly and/or by way of innuendos, maliciously false, baseless and unfounded statements and representations against my client to the effect that he had offered you a sum of Rs10 billion in lieu of your withdrawing/backing off from the Panamagate case,” the notice reads.
The notice added that “apart from causing irreparable damage to Shahbaz’s reputation, this [defamation by Imran] has caused him severe mental agony, pain and torture.” Further, if within 14 days of the receipt of the legal notice, Imran doesn’t tender a proper apology to Shahbaz “and gets the same published through print and electronic media in the same manner and with the same prominence as the publication of the defamatory statement and representation,” legal action will be taken against him for recovery of Rs10 billion as damages under the Ordinance on account of defamation committed by the PTI chief.
However, it is learnt that the PTI chief did not respond to the chief minister’s defamation notice until now.
Interestingly, this is not the first damages suit to be filed against Imran as a few other important figures, including former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and senior journalist Najam Sethi are already into litigation against the PTI chief for his ‘slanderous remarks’ against them. However, decisions on these cases are pending.
Similarly, some PTI and PML-N leaders have been pursuing damages suits against each other in the Islamabad district courts since the last general elections.
Published in Daily Times, July 7th , 2017.
