Pak court dismisses Imran Khan’s plea in six-year-old defamation case

LAHORE, (PTI): A Pakistani court has dismissed ousted prime minister Imran Khan’s petition in a six-year-old USD 61 million defamation case filed against him by incumbent Premier Shehbaz Sharif.

Khan had challenged the Lahore sessions court’s decision in the Lahore High Court regarding depriving him from his ”right to respond” in the PKR 10 billion defamation case filed against him by Shehbaz Sharif.

On Friday, LHC judge Chaudhry Muhammad Iqbal after hearing both sides dismissed Khan’s plea and upheld the verdict of the sessions court.

Earlier, the sessions court had maintained that Khan, 70, lost his ”right to respond or oppose” after he failed to respond in time to the objections raised by Shehbaz.

Khan in April 2017 alleged that Shahbaz offered him USD 61 million through a common friend to withdraw the Panama Papers case in the Supreme Court against former prime minister and his elder brother Nawaz Sharif.

The defamation suit alleged that the defendant (Khan) made false and malicious statements against the plaintiff (Shehbaz) that the latter offered Rs 10 billion to the former through a common friend in exchange for withdrawing the Panama Papers’ case pending before the Supreme Court.

Khan did not name the person who offered him USD 61 million on behalf of Shahbaz.

Shahbaz had requested the court to issue a decree for recovery of USD 61 million as compensation for the publication of defamatory content in his favour for causing great damage to his reputation in the public.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif was disqualified as prime minister in 2017 by the Supreme Court in 2017 in the Panama Papers case.

The elder Sharif had been living in the UK since November 2019 in self-exile after he was allowed to leave the country on medical grounds. Prior to his departure, Sharif was serving a seven-year jail term in Kot Lakhpat Jail Lahore in Al-Azizia Mills corruption reference. (PTI)