Jago Times "English Edition" Best Online Newspaper
The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday issued a notice to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) seeking a reply from the anti-graft watchdog on the request of PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz regarding including Nawaz Sharif’s medical reports in her plea seeking the removal of her name from the no-fly list.
A two-member bench, headed by Justice Ali Baqar Najafi, resumed hearing the case.
The federal cabinet in December last year had decided not to remove Maryam’s name from the exit control list (ECL) in the Al Azizia Steel Mills reference. Following this, on January 14 the federal cabinet had placed Maryam’s name on the ECL for a second time in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case.
During the hearing, Maryam’s lawyers Amjad Pervez and Azam Nazir Tarrar contended before the court that her father, PML-N supremo and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s fresh medical reports had also been submitted along with the petition.
“The court had directed her to submit her passport. Now, for the past two months, she has been seeking permission to go abroad just once,” her lawyers said.
They added that Nawaz’s medical reports were being regularly submitted to the court with due diligence. Nawaz has an angiography procedure scheduled for Feb 24, the court should allow Maryam to travel so that she can be with her father, the lawyers argued.
After hearing the arguments, the court sought a written reply from NAB and adjourned the hearing for February 25.
Earlier, PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif had said that because Maryam was not permitted to be with Nawaz in London, cardiologists had to change the pre-decided date for his treatment twice.
He had said that purely on the basis of humanitarian grounds, the PML-N vice president should be permitted to be with her father.
“As Nawaz’s health is concerning, the margin for medical action is reducing as more time passes,” Shehbaz had said.
He had said cardiologists had to twice change the earlier decided date for his brother’s cardiac catheterisation as Maryam was not with him. “The necessary process for his treatment had to be changed twice because his daughter Maryam Nawaz, who wants to be with her father at such a time, has not been allowed to come [to London] from Pakistan,” he had said.