LAHORE: A Lahore district court on Sunday reserved its judgment on a plea from the Anti-Corruption Establishment for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) President and former Chief Minister Punjab Parvez Elahi’s physical remand in a case about illegal recruitments in the Punjab Assembly. Elahi was presented before the court by Anti-Corruption Establishment amid tight security after he was re-arrested for the second time in 2 days on Saturday.
Ghulam Murtaza Virk, the Judicial Magistrate, was hearing ACE’s request for the physical remand of Elahi.
Elahi is facing the allegations that he recruited twelve Grade-17 officers in the Punjab Assembly against merit.
At the outset of today’s (Sunday) hearing, the ACE officials expressed a lack of confidence in judicial magistrate Virk, with the establishment’s director general Jam Salahuddin, saying they had got instructions that he should not hear the case.
For his part, the judge said that a campaign was being run against him, adding that he did not have any Facebook or other social media accounts.
The ACE official told the magistrate they needed some time to file their plea with a sessions judge and to change the judge in this case.
At that, Elahi’s counsel, Rana Intizar, argued that the court timings were about to end and said they would get a case lodged against the ACE DG if the former CM of Punjab was taken away again today.
Then, at the request of ACE DG’, Judge Virk suspended the session for a while. After the hearing restarted, the ACE’s lawyer presented his arguments, upon which the judge said that the results of the Open Testing Service mentioned in FIR were changed.
The ACE counsel said the testing service results were “tampered” with and were still available online.
Punjab Assembly Secretary in Court
Then Elahi’s counsel started presenting his arguments, saying that Rai Mumtaz, the Punjab Assembly Secretary, who was also apprehended in the case yesterday, wanted to say something. Upon the magistrate’s nod, Rai informed the court that he was the coordination secretary in Punjab Assembly when the alleged illegal appointments were made to it.
Rai said that he was walking last night when he got arrested, blindfolded, and taken around to a place where the DG anti-corruption was present. Rai said that ACE DG asked him that does he want to remain in his position. When he said yes, the DG forced him into becoming a witness.
Rai added that his testimony was forcefully recorded, and he could not sleep all night. After hearing Rai and the arguments of the lawyers, the judge reserved his decision on ACE’s request for Chaudhry Parvez Elahi’s physical remand.
