ISLAMABAD:
The Official Secrets and techniques Act courtroom issued notices for October four to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders Imran Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi within the cypher case on Monday.
The improvement got here because the courtroom of Choose Abul Hasnaat Zulqarnain formally started listening to the case following the submission of the Federal Investigation Company’s challan, naming the 2 PTI leaders as accused.
Earlier final week, the FIA claimed that former prime minister Imran had violated the Official Secrets and techniques Act, 1923 by unlawfully protecting a diplomatic cypher in his possession, and subsequently deserves to be punished underneath the regulation.
In its charge-sheet, submitted to a particular courtroom two days in the past, the company additionally accused Qureshi of facilitating Imran whereas additionally mentioning his March 27, 2022 speech at a public rally in Islamabad.
Declaring each of them responsible of violating the Official Secrets and techniques Act, the FIA requested the particular courtroom decide to attempt the highest PTI leaders and punish them.
Learn Imran, Qureshi charge-sheeted in cypher case
On March 27, 2022, earlier than going through a vote of no-confidence that led to his elimination, former premier Imran had taken out a bit of paper – allegedly a diplomatic cypher – from his pocket and displayed it at a public rally, claiming it was proof of an “worldwide conspiracy” to topple his authorities.
The FIA initiated its probe into the so-called ‘cypher-gate’ on July 19, 2023, after the PML-N-led coalition authorities introduced an official inquiry towards the previous PM and his shut associates for violating the Official Secrets and techniques Act, 1923, by misusing a labeled doc.
Qureshi, who had served because the nation’s overseas minister through the PTI’s rule, was arrested by the FIA on August 19. The company arrested Imran on August 29.
Curiously, the FIA didn’t embody PTI former secretary common Asad Umar among the many accused.
Learn extra Cypher case: Imran, Qureshi’s judicial remand prolonged until October 10
Nevertheless, Imran’s former principal secretary Azam Khan has been named as one of many witnesses within the case and his testimony underneath Sections 161 and 164 of the Code of Prison Process is connected with the charge-sheet.
The charge-sheet additionally contains transcripts of the speeches that Imran and Qureshi delivered on the March 27, 2022 rally. Moreover, the FIA has additionally submitted a listing of 28 witnesses to the courtroom, with statements of 27 of them connected to the challan.
The witnesses embody former overseas secretaries Asad Majeed, Sohail Mehmood in addition to Extra International Secretary Faisal Niaz Timrizi. In response to sources, copies of the charge-sheet are prone to be offered to Imran and Qureshi on the subsequent courtroom listening to. The courtroom will indict the accused after that.
Responding to the charge-sheet, the PTO spokesperson “unequivocally rejected the fees introduced by the FIA, terming the submitted challan “devoid of substance”.
He lambasted the fees levelled towards PTI Chairman Imran Khan and Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi, asserting that the allegations had been “as hole because the purported cypher case itself”.