LAHORE, June 15: The Lahore High Court issued pre-admission notices for June 25 in five writ petitions filed by Najam Sethi, his wife Jugnoo Mohsin and their Vanguard Books (private) Limited and restrained the income tax officer concerned from ‘framing an assessment order’ in the meanwhile.

The petitioners alleged through their counsel, advocates Talib H Rizvi and Tafazzul H Rizvi, that the government has unleashed a campaign of harassment against The Friday Times editor and his journalist wife because of their bold and objective reporting and analysis of political developments.

The campaign was intensified after an interview Mr. Sethi gave to a BBC team making a film on the Sharif family’s industrial empire and he was detained for a month after his arrest in a nocturnal raid.

The fresh tax notices and reassessment of their previous years’ liability, they alleged, was of the vendetta let loose by the government.

Justice Nasim Sikandar, a newly-appointed additional judge who earlier served as a member of an income tax tribunal, rejected the counsel’s suggestion that the petitions may be referred to the chief justice for assignment to a confirmed judge ‘because additional judges were not being confirmed despite the chief justices’ recommendations’, and proceeded to issue pre-admission notices to the respondent tax officials.

Earlier on Monday, a division bench comprising justices Falak Sher and Nasim Chaudhry, adjourned the hearing of an appeal filed by Mrs. Sethi against summary dismissal of her petition for registration of a case against the lawmen who broke into her house and bedroom in the dead of the night, roughed up the couple and whisked away Mr. Sethi in view of the proceedings pending in the Supreme Court on the role of the Inter Services Intelligence.

Source: Dawn

Date:6/16/1999