LAHORE: Counsel for Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif and his son Hamza on Thursday opted to withdraw a petition against an inquiry by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) into money laundering charges after the Lahore High Court (LHC) questioned its maintainability.

Earlier, a two-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti, took up the petition with Advocate Amjad Pervez, the petitioners’ counsel, standing behind the rostrum to start his arguments.

To a bench’s query, the counsel said the FIA registered the impugned FIR two years after it initiated its inquiry.

The chief justice asked the court whether the petitioners had challenged the inquiry before the trial court since the challan (investigation report) had been submitted by the agency.

Advocate Pervez said the petition sought quashment of the FIR and suspension of the proceedings before the trial court. He said the allegations in the FIR of the FIA were already a subject matter of a reference pending before an accountability court.

Justice Bhatti said the petition challenged the FIA’s case only and the court could not decide the question of ‘double jeopardy’ without seeing the investigation of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

The counsel sought the court’s permission to withdraw the petition to file it afresh with necessary amendments.

The bench allowed the request and dismissed the petition as withdrawn.

Both father and son are on pre-arrest bail in the FIA case since last year.

The petition had stated that the proceedings in the inquiry against the petitioners were prompted by mala fide intention, ulterior motive and considerations extraneous to law. It questioned the FIA’s jurisdiction to register the impugned FIR, saying the agency did not have the jurisdiction to proceed in such matters. It said none of the suspects nominated in the FIR was a public servant in the service of the government or employee of any company/corporation.

The petition said the proceedings had been initiated against the petitioners when they were already in judicial lock-up in another case filed by NAB on similar charges.

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2022