An Islamabad accountability court on Friday summoned former president and co-chairperson of Pakistan People's Party Asif Ali Zardari, his sister Faryal Talpur, Hussain Lawai, Anwar Majeed and others, to appear in court on April 8 in the fake accounts case.

A banking court in Karachi had last week accepted the National Accountability Bureau's (NAB) plea to transfer the fake bank accounts case to the accountability court in Islamabad for trial.

However, the registrar office of the accountability court had found that certain documents were missing from the record transferred to Islamabad, and that the documents submitted were not in order.

The office had rejected the documents at the time and asked the Karachi court to file the documents again. The documents were resent and accepted by the accountability court yesterday.

Last month, a NAB prosecutor had submitted a statement to the trial court on behalf of NAB Chairman Javed Iqbal, saying the investigation of the case had been transferred to the anti-graft watchdog by the apex court. Therefore, he requested the trial court’s judge to transfer the proceedings of trial in the case to the accountability court.

Until the case was shifted to Islamabad last week, a Karachi banking court was conducting its proceedings. The case has been handed over to Accountability Judge Mohammad Arshad Malik.

The registrar office of the accountability court conducted a scrutiny of the record transferred from the banking court and then referred it to Judge Malik.

Judge Malik issued the summons for all the accused persons in this case and adjourned further proceedings till April 8, when the court would commence formal proceedings in the fake accounts case.

Mohammad Bashir, another Islamabad-based accountability court judge, is also conducting proceedings in a related matter in which five accused namely Aftab Memon, Mohammad Bashir, Abdul Jabbar, Najam Zaman and Hassan Memon have been remanded to the custody of National Accountability Bureau (NAB). These five accused have been sent on physical remand till March 28.