LAHORE:
An accountability court on Wednesday sent 58 Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) workers on a 14-day judicial remand following their rioting near National Accountability Bureau (NAB) before party’s Vice-President Maryam Nawaz’s appearance a day before.
Punjab Police produced the 58 party workers before the judicial magistrate wherein they prayed before the court to send the workers on physical remand to investigate the incident and identify more suspects.
Counsel for PML-N workers, Farhad Ali Shah, prayed before the court that the case was political in nature and his clients were being targeted. “Thus, the case should be dismissed and the accused should be released.â€
After hearing the views of the parties, the court rejected the request for physical remand of the accused and sent them to jail on judicial remand for 14 days.
On August 11, the anti-graft watchdog was unable to record the statement of PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz in an “illegal†land requisition case as a clash broke out between her party activists and police outside NAB office in Lahore when she arrived there.
Punjab government compared the PML-N’s activists’ attack on the NAB’s office in Lahore to how an unruly mob of the party’s office-bearers and workers had stormed into the Supreme Court building in 1997.
“The PML-N has repeated its history of attacking a national institution,†Punjab Law Minister Raja Basharat said at a press conference accompanied by Information Minister Fayazul Hassan Chohan.
“The PML-N is mistaken if it believes that it will be able to pressure institutions in this manner,†he added.
