ISLAMABAD: A petition has been filed in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) requesting the court to prevent the expected issuance of a diplomatic passport to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Nawaz, who is convicted in a corruption case, has been living in London on the pretext of ill health since November 2019, when the Lahore High Court (LHC) had allowed him to leave the country for four weeks for medical treatment after Shehbaz Sharif, his younger brother and the incumbent prime minister, gave an undertaking that the senior Sharif would return within the stipulated time.
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) was moved on Friday to prevent the expected issuance of a diplomatic passport to PML-N supremo and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and direct the relevant authorities to immediately arrest him upon his return to Pakistan from London.
A lawyer, Advocate Naeem Haider Panjutha, filed a petition in the IHC, referring to media reports that said Nawaz was being issued a diplomatic passport on the instructions of newly elected PM Shehbaz.
The petitioner contended that as Nawaz was “a court absconder who was convicted by learned NAB (National Accountability Bureau) Court for corruption … it is violative of law, a mockery of the justice system and disgrace to the nation if a diplomatic passport is issued to a convict”.
The “issuance of a diplomatic passport to a convict is tantamount to bestowing respect, state protocols and dignity to a convict and if the convict is a court absconder it becomes a disgrace to the entire judicial system of the country,” he said, adding the act was also “against the spirit of the Constitution and against the fundamental rights whereby it has been guaranteed to every citizen that they will be treated equally”.
Moreover, the petition stated, the country’s courts had held that a fugitive would lose all rights a normal person was entitled to, adding that Article 25 of the Constitution had set clear standards against discrimination against citizens.
The petitioner further argued that the “illegal and unlawful” act of the interior and foreign affairs secretaries of issuing a diplomatic passport to a convict and court absconder “is not sustainable in the eyes of law”.
“The honorable superior courts have held in a number of cases that public servants are not duty-bound to implement or obey the illegal directions of the superiors and whoever acts illegal just to please a superior will solely be responsible for that illegal act,” the petitioner added.
Advocate Panjutha underlined that it was mandatory for all convicts to surrender before the law. Nawaz, on the other hand, had “yet to surrender before the law”, while “the federal government is hurriedly trying to issue [a] diplomatic passport to him”, he claimed. IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah will hear the petition on April 18.
In August last year, Nawaz had filed an appeal with the British Immigration Tribunal after the Home Department refused to extend his stay in the country on “medical grounds” any further.
