Petition seeking money trail of LHC chief justice dismissed

IHC’s Justice Aurangzeb terms the request non-maintainable

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking the ‘money trail’ of Lahore High Court’s Chief Justice Mansoor Ali Shah for the time when he allegedly had a loan of Rs350 million waived.

Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb of the IHC dismissed as not maintainable the petition seeking money trail of LHC’s top judge, especially for the period when served as the managing director of Mansoor Textile Mills and Aaj Textiles and obtained a loan before it was waived off.

A lawyer, Anwar Dar, through his counsel Col (Retd) Inamul Rahiem, had approached the IHC and named the Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) chairman, United Bank Ltd president, journalist Umer Cheema and the Punjab Bar Council (PBC) secretary as the respondents in the petition.

While referring to a news report revealing details about the loan, Rahiem said that he had tried to establish the veracity of the report and in this regard had filed a written request to the LHC registrar under the Right to Access of Information Act, but received no response.

Drawing a blank at the LHC, Rahiem said that his client wrote a separate request to the PBC seeking details about the time Justice Shah spent as a lawyer. He added that no information has so far been provided from any quarter “which speaks volumes of malice on the part of hierarchy”.

Rahiem further said that the petitioner also filed a reference before the Supreme Judicial Council on July 5 and that he required the information to supplement his reference. At the moment, he contended, the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act, 2017, was not functional.

He urged the court to issue directions to provide the complete money trail of the loans obtained and written off, complete service record, the period in which Justice Shah remained director and beneficiary of the textile mills.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15^th, 2017.