ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday accepted post-arrest bail plea of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Senator Azam Swati in the controversial tweets case against him.
During the hearing today, IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq barred the FIA from arresting him. The court approved Swati’s bail against the submission of surety bonds worth Rs200,000.
Earlier in the day, the high court had reserved its judgment on Swati’s petition.
It may be recalled that the senator was incarcerated on November 27 after the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) booked him in Islamabad over a “campaign of intimidating tweets against state institutions”, including the former chief of army staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Today’s proceedings:
Babar Awan Advocate appeared before the court on behalf of Azam Swati and argued in the defense of his client with the withdrawal of a letter by which Swati had expressed his lack of trust on Chief Justice IHC Justice Aamer Farooq.
Responding to this, Chief Justice IHC Justice Aamer Farooq said a larger bench would be constituted next week, since most senior judge were on vacation, so that this matter could be settled once and for all.
However, soon after today’s hearing a controversy developed when taking to Twitter, Azam Swati’s daughter Farah Swati revealed that her brother was ‘forced’ to withdraw letter of no confidence against CJ Aamer Farooq.
Babar Awan said not once in his life did he see an FIR which had no mentions of date and location of the offence, and that SOPs were not followed while registering the case against 74 year old PTI Senator Azam Swati.
At one occasion, when the deputy attorney general, appeared before the court, he requested more time for the arguments, to which the CJ Justice Aamer Farooq enquired about Challan of the case. Responding to the CJ, FIA said that Challan had already been submitted on December 24, and hearing was fixed for tomorrow (Jan 3).
The deputy attorney general said that the PTI senator has committed the crime again and a case has already been pending.
The FIA said that Swati did not surrender his Twitter account. At this, the court said that the investigating agency itself ended the physical remand.
