Shehbaz Sharif and Hamza Shehbaz, leaders of the opposition in the National and Punjab Assemblies, submitted an application on Wednesday to quash a First Information Report (FIR) filed against them for allegedly possessing assets beyond known sources of income, impersonation, forgery, and money laundering between 2008 and 2018.
The father-son duo filed a plea in the Lahore High Court (LHC), asking for the FIR to be annulled as well as a restraining order against the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
Both leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) accused the government of utilising institutions for “political revenge,” claiming that investigations into them were launched in order to incriminate them in “false criminal cases,” but that no evidence could be found against them.
Shehbaz said in his appeal that the National Accountability Bureau summoned him in one case and arrested him in another.
Between 2008 and 2018, the opposition leader is accused of accumulating assets worth Rs7,328 million in his own name and in the names of benamidars, which are disproportionate to recognised sources of income. In order to legitimise the “disproportionate assets,” he has also been accused of indulging in money laundering.
They said that they were visited by an FIA investigative team at Kot Lakhpat Jail, and that they provided whatever information they had while pleading innocence. They went on to say that despite the passage of time, no investigative report had been issued, and that the FIR itself was in clear breach of Section 173 of Code of Criminal procedure obligatory conditions.
They went on to say that the investigating officer’s conduct toward the conclusion of the investigation was found to be sluggish by the learned court, and that repeated orders were issued for the submission of an investigation report under Section 173 of the CrPC, but that the report was delayed for various reasons.
They also pointed out legal inconsistencies in the procedure of submitting challans and appearing in court, as well as how things progressed, eventually culminating in the petition they were submitting to the high court.
As a result, the opposition leaders sought the court to dismiss the FIR filed against them.
