The Lahore High Court on Tuesday termed an intra-court appeal filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against the release of former Punjab chief minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) president Parvez Elahi as "not maintainable" and disposed of it.
On Tuesday, Elahi was presented before a two-judge panel of the Lahore High Court (LHC), comprising Justice Raheel Kamran and Justice Ali Baqar Najafi.
NAB Special Prosecutors Syed Waqar Hussain Naqvi, Muhammad Arshad Qayyum and Waris Ali Janjua appeared along with Investigation Officer Najab Abbas and legal counsels Muhammad Abid Hussain Saqi and Amer Saeed Rawn.
The court, after hearing the arguments, reserved its judgement and later read out a four-page judgement.
The court heard from Elahi's representatives that the appellant was bent upon victimising Elahi by involving him in various inquiries one after the other and that the court should take notice of such mala fide and dismiss the Intra Court Appeal.
It added that NAB had previously filed an intra-court appeal earlier as well, but it had been dismissed by the court. Hence, a second intra-court appeal is "not competent is concerned".
Further, it noted that the appeals were filed by the Punjab government when "for all practical purposes, the NAB does not come within the ambit or control of it."
The court noted that counsels for NAB had failed to refer to any part of the previous order whereby direction, if any, had been issued to them.
"Therefore, we are of the view that the appellant was not aggrieved of the impugned order passed on the writ petition since it did not issue any specific direction to the appellant, hence, we deem it appropriate to
observe that such an order does not adversely affect the appellant," it read.
"In this view of the matter, this Intra Court Appeal is disposed of being not
maintainable," it said.
The court later directed to send Elahi to Adiala Jail on judicial remand.