PPP rejects JIT report against Zardari

Islamabad: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Monday rejected the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) report submitted before the Supreme Court against former President Asif Ali Zardari.

Addressing a press conference here, PPP leaders Senator Sherry Rehman, Nayyar Bokhari, Farhatulah Babar, Senator Sassi Palijo and Nazir Dhoki said the cases against Zardari were fake.

Sherry Rehman said that only opposition parties were being held accountable in the country.

She said an individual who violated the constitution was being given immunity and he was living abroad. She said the JIT members’ meetings with the ministers made the investigations controversial.

She said a joke was being played in the name of accountability in the country and asked that is it a Madina-like state.

Nayyar Bokhari strongly rejected the JIT report. The JIT presented report held Zardari and Omni groups responsible in the money laundering case.

He alleged that JIT presented report was actually a link between the sitting government and JIT and added that in past number of cases also registered against Asif Ali Zardari but all these cases proved wrong.

Bokhari said the JIT report had been prepared by the PPP’s political opponents. He said such report had also been prepared in past against party founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and now against Asif Ali Zardari.

Meanwhile, PPP Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar – the spokesperson to PPP chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari – said that the JIT report had made the JIT a laughing stock in the eyes of the nation.

He said the so-called money-laundering case stories were cooked up that ended in the receipt of breakfast, laundry charges and prices of sacrificial goats. He said that jesters of this JIT under PTI influence had been exposed before the nation.

In a statement, the lawmaker said that it was also unfortunate that Supreme Court did not take notice of the leakage of the JIT report before it was presented to the top court.

“Bias was exposed at the time when advisor to the Prime Minister on accountability Shahzad Akbar had a secret meeting with the JIT members which came into the open afterwards. Party will consult the legal team and then the party will make its strategy,” Senator Khokhar said.

On the sentence given by Accountability Court against Nawaz Sharif Senator Khokhar said that it proved that accountability is only for the opposition.

He asked that when the government members will be held accountable. “There is no doubt that government and the NAB are hands in gloves. This connivance is pushing the country towards chaos and anarchy. Pakistan has been further divided instead of one Pakistan slogan by the PTI,” the Senator said.

in another statement, Amir Fida Paracha, the spokesperson to Asif Ali Zardari, said that the proceeding in the Supreme Court and the accountability court judgment clearly “teaches us that we should avoid taking suo-moto notices with impunity.”

He said such kinds of situation which has arisen in the past and more recently just today generates several questions regarding judicial system of Pakistan.

Paracha said that it was well known phrase in judicial history that justice delayed was justice denied but at the same time the phrase “justice rushed is justice crushed” was more relevant in current situation. “There is no relief or remedy for a person or family once defamed through this hasty justice option which has been assumed by the judiciary,” he said.