ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Interior Tallal Chaudhry asked the Supreme Court on Monday not to doubt his intention since he had never committed any contempt of the court and pleaded that the notice against him be discharged.

In a statement recorded under Section 342 of the Criminal Procedure Code before a three-judge SC bench headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed, the minister pleaded that he had made thousands of speeches in public but not a single institution or organisation or even his opponents had ever served any legal notice on him.

The apex court had taken up a contempt of court case against Tallal Chaudhry for his derogatory and contemptuous speeches/statements at public gatherings against the Supreme Court which were also telecast by some television channels. The court had indicted him for his Jan 1 and 27 anti-judiciary speeches considered to be contemptuous and intended to bring the judiciary and the judges into hatred.

Earlier also in a written reply, the minister had requested the court to withdraw the contempt charge since he faced no allegation of prejudicing any matter pending before the court. He had stated that he honestly believed that he did not utter anything nor acted in a manner which might be construed as causing obstruction of the process of the court in any way nor any order of the court had been disobeyed.

“I am not a habitual offender and my opponents in my constituency are using the contempt proceedings as part of campaign against me,” Tallal Chaudhry said on Monday.

However, the court did not record the last part of his statement. During the recording of his statement, the courtroom No 5 suddenly experienced a power shutdown. At this, Justice Ahmed regretted by stating: “See what they are doing to us. This is the third time since morning that electricity had gone off.”

The minister pleaded that he might be shown grace by the court. When asked by the court if he would produce witnesses in his defence, the minister as well as his counsel Kamran Murtaza said they would respond to the question after consultation.

The court postponed the proceedings till Wednesday with a direction to submit a list of defence witnesses and said the defence might also complete their arguments the same day.

When asked for some more time for consultation, Justice Ahmed said why increase “you and others’ agony”.

Referring to the word Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) in his speeches, the minister explained that he used this word because it was part of the country’s history which also had been referred to by the Supreme Court in many of its judgements. The reference to PCO was just a symbolic since it had also been mentioned in previous speeches during the famous lawyers’ movement and such aspect was also dealt with in the charter of democracy, he argued.

When Mr Chaudhry tried to highlight the current situation which his political party (PML-N) is facing, Justice Ahmed reminded the former that in the contempt case he was representing only himself and not his party. “This is not a platform to make a political speech,” the judge observed.

The court also showed no inclination to record when the minister recalled how he and his party were implicated in blasphemy charges as well as the offence of treachery.

The minister said he was a young man, a law graduate, a democrat from a middle-class family and a political worker who was also an elected representative.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2018