SC to announce short verdict today in Justice Isa’s petition against presidential reference

The Supreme Court on Friday concluded hearings and reserved its judgement on a set of pleas challenging the presidential reference against Justice Qazi Faez Isa and will announce a short verdict at 4pm today.

The reference filed against Justice Isa by the government in May last year alleged that he acquired three properties in London on lease in the name of his wife and children between 2011 and 2015, but did not disclose them in his wealth returns. Justice Isa contested the allegation, saying he is not a beneficial owner of the flats — neither directly nor indirectly.

The government’s counsel, Dr Farogh Naseem, who resigned as the federal law minister to appear before the court in this case, submitted a reply from the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) about Mrs Isa’s complaint that she had disclosed properties in her tax returns for 2018-2019 but the FBR had still issued her a notice.

Justice Umar Ata Bandial who was heading a ten-judge full bench hearing the case said that the judge’s wife had brought all documents pertaining to the properties on record and the government would verify them.

He argued that the government had come to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) instead of going to the FBR, adding that Justice Isa had “never interfered” in the tax body’s workings. He said Justice Isa had been forced to challenge the presidential reference to defend his and his wife’s honour and requested the court to declare the reference invalid.

Malik also demanded that the government’s counsel submit receipts for searching the record of properties in a UK court, saying that this exercise would determine whether the Assets Recovery Unit (ARU) had searched for them or someone else had done it. He claimed that the ARU had only acted as a facilitator in the reference.

Justice Isa’s counsel further claimed that the government brought in a reference against his client only because it wanted to remove the judge who had announced the verdict in the Faizabad sit-in case. “The court should not consider this petition as the case of an individual. Do we want a law that allows one institution to spy on another?” he questioned.

Justice Yahya Afridi then questioned Malik as to whether a judge’s individual rights were more important than the oath he took.

The counsel for the Supreme Court Bar Association Hamid Khan argued that Islam gave every individual the right to own property. Iftikhar Gilani, who was representing the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council said 29 petitions had been filed by different bar councils and bar associations against the presidential reference.

“These are not Justice Isa’s relatives. The government’s reference has no basis and is against the freedom of judges,” he argued.

Justice Bandial said the question was whether the reference should be completely dismissed. “This is a very important question [for the bench]. Bar councils and bar associations have full faith in the judiciary,” he observed.

Justice Yahya questioned whether Justice Isa had violated his oath by appearing in the court to which Malik replied that that will be determined after it is decided whether the judge had appeared in the court for his own self or for the judiciary.

“Today, a reference has been filed against Justice Isa, tomorrow it can be filed against anybody,” he concluded.

A day earlier, a teary-eyed Mrs Justice Qazi Faez Isa presented before the court the evidence of funds used to purchase the three offshore properties whose money trail is a key to a presidential reference filed against her husband.

“We are quite satisfied that you have the material in support of the source (of money) for the properties,” observed Justice Bandial after the recording of her statement. “You have a strong answer to the slur caused by the allegations.”