Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lawmaker, Hamza Shehbaz, on Friday, served a defamation notice to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief, Imran Khan, for claiming the ruling party had offered him Rs10 billion to stay mum on the Panama Papers scandal days after his father Punjab Chief Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had sent a similar notice to the cricketer-turned-politician.
The notice, a copy of which is available with media, was sent through Advocate Azam Nazeer Tarar. Referring to the PTI chief’s claim, it said: “The statement that our client [Hamza] had directly made an offer of payment of Rs10 billion to you to back off from pursuing the case of Panama Leaks, is absolutely false.”
It went on to claim that Imran’s statement is “damaging and injurious” because of the sensitive nature of the position held by the PML-N lawmaker. “These publications are part of a concerted effort to malign our client and have been made with an aim to tarnish his public image.”
The notice, served under Section 8 of the Defamation Ordinance, 2002, demanded the opposition politician to publicly apologise within 14 days in the “same manner and with the same prominence as the original defamatory publications,” adding if Imran failed in “doing the above, we have been instructed to initiate civil proceedings to recover a sum of Rs10 billion as damages.”
