Express News reported that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s post-arrest bail request in the cipher case received a notice from the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday.
Chief Justice Aamer Farooq of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) heard the PTI chairman’s bail request. Imran’s lawyer, Salman Safdar, visited.
In response to the PTI chairman’s lawyers’ repeated requests for an expedited hearing, the court stated that the process is in place and the bail application will be set by next Monday.
The deposed prime minister went to the Islamabad High Court after his bail request was rejected by a special court.
The PTI leader is being held behind bars till September 26 on judicial remand. In this case, the special court has asked the FIA to issue a challan.
The PTI leader had earlier claimed in his appeal that the prosecution had brought a fake and malicious case. He said that the special court, established to examine cases involving the Official Secrets Act, “completely ignored several of the prosecution’s irregularities and contradictions”.
According to a written ruling from special court judge Abul Hasnat Zulqarnain, the prosecution had “irrefutable evidence against Imran Khan and [PTI leader] Shah Mahmood Qureshi to prove their connection to the case” and that the missing cipher case was a top-secret matter.
According to the court, there is “sufficient incriminating evidence on file to link the accused with the current case.”
“The record further shows that in light of the contents of the present FIR [First Information Report], there appear reasonable grounds for assuming that the accused/petitioners are guilty of the offense [under] sections 5 and 9 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923.
Additionally, there are valid reasons to think that the petitioners and accused have committed an offense that is not subject to bail. A seven-page written order stated that “the record which is in color of various documents is sufficient for discarding the bails of both the accused.”
In the order, the court also observed that despite its instructions from September 11th, the petitioners’ attorneys failed to address any errors in a certificate’s footnote.
“As a result, this court is forced to deliberate on the merits of the immediate bail applications as well as on compliance with the court order. Therefore, both accused parties’ instant post-arrest bail applications are denied.
“Cypher Saga”
Before facing a vote of no confidence on March 27, 2022, former prime minister Imran Khan had produced a piece of paper from his pocket that was supposedly a diplomatic cipher and waved it in front of a crowd in Islamabad, claiming it was proof of an “international conspiracy” to overthrow his administration.
After the PML-N-led coalition government announced an official inquiry against the former PM and his close associates for violating the Official Secrets Act of 1923 for illegal possession of the classified document public, the FIA launched an inquiry into the so-called “cypher-gate” on July 19, this year.
On August 19, the agency arrested Qureshi, who had been the nation’s foreign minister throughout the PTI’s leadership.
