Islamabad: A petition has been filed in Pakistan’s Supreme Court seeking to summon Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the Panama leaks case involving his family.
The petition has been filed in the Lahore Registry of the Supreme Court seeking the apex court’s orders, officials said.
The petition filed by Barrister Javed Iqbal Jafri claimed that Mr Sharif had smuggled billions of rupees out of the country which inflicted irreparable loss to the national exchequer.
He pleaded the court to summon the Prime Minister and make him record his statement as he has to provide evidence of his innocence as required to do so in breach of trust case under Pakistani and Islamic laws.
The names of several Pakistanis including Nawaz Sharif’s children Maryam, Hussain, and Hasan surfaced in one of the world’s biggest ever data leaks through an online searchable database made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in April 2016, following which the prime minister had formed an inquiry commission to probe the offshore accounts. The government and the opposition could not agree on drafting joint rerms of references.
The apex court on October 21 had announced to begin the hearing on the Panamagate petitions filed against Mr Sharif and his family members.
Chief Justice of Pakistan Anwar Zaheer Jamali formed a larger bench in a bid to hear petitions in the Panama Papers leaks case on November 1.
