LAHORE: Lahore High Court Chief Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry on Friday dismissed a petition seeking contempt of court proceedings against former PPP information secretary Fauzia Wahab for giving contradictory statements about diplomatic immunity to Raymond Davis.
The chief justice dismissed the petition, and observed that statements by politicians did not affect court proceedings as they expressed their personal views.
Advocate Rana Ilamudin Ghazi had filed the petition submitting that Ms Wahab, at a press briefing, had claimed that Raymond enjoyed a diplomatic immunity.
The petitioner said respondent Fauzia knew that the matter was pending with the court, but she went on to claim immunity for Davis. He pleaded that the act of the respondent amounted to contempt of court. He, therefore, requested the court to issue a notice to the respondent besides initiating contempt proceedings against her.
LARGER BENCH: The LHC chief justice constituted a larger bench to hear a petition challenging remission of sentence to Interior Minister Rehman Malik by President Asif Ali Zardari.
Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed will head the bench, while the next hearing of the petition will be fixed by the court office. Earlier, this petition had been heard by a three-member full bench.
Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi, media adviser of the Save Judiciary Committee, filed this petition submitting that the LHC had restored sentence earlier awarded to Rehman Malik by an accountability court and Malik instead of filing an appeal against it in the Supreme Court directly approached the president for getting presidential pardon. He said the president pardoned Rehman Malik by exercising his power.
He claimed after restoration of the conviction by the high court, the remission granted by the president was unlawful.
The petitioner further said the president abused Article 45 of the Constitution for pardoning the conviction of Rehman Malik and also ignored legal formalities involved in the matter.
He requested the court to restore sentence of Malik setting aside the notification of presidential pardon.
Source: Dawn
Date:2/26/2011
