The implications in some sections of media regarding a meeting of Supreme Court (SC) Judge Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan are “absolutely unfounded”, the apex court’s registrar clarified Tuesday.
“Honourable Justice Khosa has never met or talked to Imran Khan in any private capacity throughout his life and has no personal acquaintance with the gentleman,” top court’s Registrar Arbab Muhammad Arif said in a statement.
Regarding the insinuations in some sections of the social, print and electronic media that in a recent interview with a private TV channel, the PTI chief had stated that he had been requested by the SC judge to file a petition before the SC in connection with the Panama Papers scandal, Arif said, “The allegation is absolutely unfounded and completely untrue. The interview itself refers to some observations made in the courtroom during a judicial proceeding.”
Claiming that a ‘malicious’ campaign was being run against the honourable judge of the apex court, the registrar said constitutional petitions to the scandal were fixed for hearing before a 5-judge SC bench, headed by then chief justice of Pakistan Anwar Zaheer Jamali, adding Justice Khosa was also a part of the larger bench.
“When the hearing of the matter came to a close on that day Justice Khosa addressed the learned counsel for the parties and observed in open court to the effect that now that the court sitting at the apex of the dispute resolution mechanisms in the country had taken cognizance of the matter the parties would be well advised to ‘hold their horses’ and to reconsider their positions regarding the call for lockdown of Islamabad planned for the next day which was likely to cause extreme hardship to the citizens at large,” the communiqué read.
Despite the reporting of the court proceedings by all major television channels and newspapers of the country on the following day (November 2, 2016), the registrar said, a campaign was being run against the SC judge by twisting some of the words used in the PTI chief’s interview.
