An accountability court on Saturday acquitted former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and ten others in the Aashiana Iqbal Housing Reference, noting that the corruption allegations against them could not be proved.
Lahore Accountability Court Judge Ali Zulqarnain Awan, while reading out a short order on the reserved judgement in the application filed by the accused for acquittal, noted that the case was heard on its merits, but the prosecution failed to prove the case.
Earlier during the hearing, NAB and the Attorney General presented their reports.
National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Prosecutor Ali Janjua told the court that they did not find any evidence of corruption by the accused. He urged the court to decide per law and the case's merits. He added that the Supreme Court's decision to stay the implementation of an amendment to the NAB laws also did not apply to this case as the court had only stopped the courts from giving a verdict where the suspects were benefiting from the amendment, which was not the case here.
At this, Judge Awan said he would announce his verdict on the disposal appeals in two hours.
After that, he announced his decision to acquit Shehbaz and ten others, including senior bureaucrat and caretaker federal minister Fawad Hasan Fawad.
Judge Awan noted that the case was heard on its merits, and the prosecution could not prove its allegations. Hence, Shehbaz, Fawad, Ahad Khan Cheema, and others, including Muneer Zia, Imtiaz Haider, Bilal Kidwai, Sajjad Bhatta, and Shahid Mehmood, were acquitted.
The court had initially reserved its judgement on November 1 but had paused the announcement of the verdict until it reviewed a detailed, written order issued by the Supreme Court over the NAB amendment laws.
NAB had originally accused Shehbaz and others of corruption in a case where the government had promised to provide 16,000 impoverished people with homes where the public had submitted Rs610 million. However, due to inefficiency and incompetence, the state had to bear a heavy loss on the project, and the court had indicted ten people.