ISLAMABAD: The attorney general and head of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) will submit a report in the Supreme Court today over the implementation, or lack thereof, of the apex court’s 2012 Asghar Khan case verdict.
On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected the review petitions of former army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg and former Inter-Services Intelligence DG Lieutenant General Asad Durrani against the verdict.
A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Saqib Nisar, was hearing review petitions filed by the former army officers.
Dismissing the review pleas, the court had issued a notice to the AG and FIA DG regarding the implementation of the verdict.
Rejecting his involvement in the case, Gen (retd) Beg told the court, “I did not give any such orders during my time as army chief.”
Earlier in the day, Justice Nisar had questioned why the verdict had still not been implemented.
“If the court accepts review petitions, then the verdict will stand null and void,” the CJP had said.
That the FIA has decided to summon the former generals in the case to present evidence of providing money to politicians for the 1990 elections.
The FIA is also expected to make a new committee to probe the case in light of the apex court’s orders.
Case history
On October 19, 2012, the apex court had issued a 141-page verdict, ordering legal proceedings against Gen (retd) Beg and Lt Gen (retd) Durrani in a case filed 16 years ago by former air chief Air Marshal Asghar Khan.
Khan, who passed away in January this year, was represented in the Supreme Court by renowned lawyer Salman Akram Raja.
CJP to hear review petitions in Asghar Khan case on Monday
Khan had petitioned the Supreme Court in 1996 alleging that the two senior army officers and the then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan had doled out Rs140 million among several politicians ahead of the 1990 polls to ensure Benazir Bhutto’s defeat in the polls.
The Islamic Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), consisting of nine parties including the Pakistan Muslim League, National Peoples Party and Jamaat-e-Islami, had won the 1990 elections, with Nawaz Sharif being elected prime minister. The alliance had been formed to oppose the Benazir Bhutto-led Pakistan Peoples Party.
In 1996, Khan had written a letter to the then Supreme Court Chief Justice Nasim Hassan Shah naming Beg, Durrani and Younis Habib, the ex-Habib Bank Sindh chief and owner of Mehran Bank, about the unlawful disbursement of public money and its misuse for political purposes.
The 2012 apex court judgment, authored by the then-Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry, had directed the Federal Investigation Agency to initiate a transparent investigation and subsequent trial if sufficient evidence is found against the former army officers.
That investigation is yet to conclude.
