The government has demanded that Volume-10 of Joint Investigation Team (JIT) report, submitted with the Supreme Court in Panama Papers case, should be made public. Talking to mediapersons outside the Supreme Court premises after the hearing of Panama Papers case, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb urged the Supreme Court to make Volume-10 of JIT report public to make things clear. She added that making the Volume-10 of the final report public will reveal the real intentions of the JIT.
The JIT report is not the ultimate decision, but it is the Supreme Court which will make the final decision in this regard, she added. "We have filed a petition that unverified documents should be inadmissible in the court," she said, adding that documents provided to the Supreme Court have no authenticity and asked who will confirm the authenticity of those unverified documents. She further said that Sharif family has filed a petition to be provided with Volume-10 of the JIT report. "We also want to know under what authority the JIT is still continuing its investigation against the Prime Minister and his family," she questioned.
The reservations which the PML-N had earlier raised against the JIT still persist, she said, adding that the language used by the JIT members in the report reveals their malicious designs towards the Sharif family. "Our opponents have failed to prove any corruption case against the Prime Minister," Marriyum Aurangzeb claimed. Condemning the Peshawar blast that occurred on Monday morning, wherein an officer of the Frontier Corps was martyred and several others got injured, the minister said that terrorists will never succeed in their nefarious mission. "Terror acts cannot break our resolve against the menace of terrorism," she added.
Meanwhile, State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali said that the Prime Minister will stay in power and continue running the government affairs. Talking to the media persons outside the Supreme Court building, he said that Nawaz Sharif will stay in power and Pakistan will continue its journey towards development.
The minister said that the JIT report carries no weight and it based its report on certain speculations that are beyond facts. He criticised Sheikh Rashid's political career, highlighting his role as Nawaz Sharif's aide before he joined military dictator Pervez Musharraf. "Wrong counselling of such leaders had resulted in 1999 fiasco." "God willing the apex court will decide the case on merit and not on Imran Khan's wishes," he hoped, adding that despite whatever happened "we respect the honourable judges."
He said that stories of Imran Khan, Sheikh Rashid and General (retd) Musharraf will become a part of the past because no evidence has been produced before the apex court, adding, "We expect justice from the Supreme Court." Member of National Assembly of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Daniyal Aziz on the occasion said that joint investigation team (JIT) ignored facts in its report.
Talking to media persons, he said that it is the first hearing on the JIT report in the Supreme Court and every page of the report has been discussed in the court. He added that page number 73 of the report, that carries conclusive findings about ownership of flats, has not been discussed so far.
He said that remarks in the report against the Prime Minister are based on mere speculations instead of evidence. He said the words like "most likely" and "seems" have been used to declare Prime Minister the owner of the flats and this is not acceptable. Since, he used to live in those flats during his visits, thus the report claimed him to be the owner of those flats. He said the report is based on speculations and probabilities and actual facts were ignored in the JIT investigation. He said that judges have raised questions about verification of documents which mostly consist of just cuttings of newspapers and trash.
Mentioning about the British forensic company Quist Solicitors, which, according to him, was hired against the PPRA rules, he said Wajid Zia, the head of JIT, sent the record to the company which his cousin owns to prove the deed document signed between Maryam Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz in 2004 as fake and manipulate the record. Later on, the JIT dragged the Calibri font matter to suppress the facts, he claimed. He also claimed that the font has been available since 2004.A three-judge Supreme Court bench seized with the Panama Papers implementation case, resumed hearing on the JIT report on Monday with the parties involved hoping to get the decision according to their wishes.
The Sharifs' legal team has filed the objections in the court, rejecting the report in its entirety. It termed the findings biased, politically motivated and an attempt to tarnish the image of the Prime Minister and his family while pleading to judges to nullify the report. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar also filed his objections to the report.