After Monday’s hearing: JIT report not binding on apex court, says Marriyum

Says no one could ask PM to resign on the basis of ‘unverified documents’

ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb has said findings of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) are not binding on the Supreme Court and that no one can ask Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his resignation on the basis of ‘unverified documents’.

“The JIT’s findings are not the decision of the Supreme Court. No one can ask for the PM to resign on the basis of unverified documents,” Marriyum said while speaking to reporters after a three-judge Supreme Court bench on Monday took up the JIT report for review.

“The apex court will give its ruling in line with the Constitution and law; therefore it’s too early to draw out any conclusion on the basis of the report which, of course, is misleading and biased,” she added.

She claimed that all documents submitted by the prime minister and his family members were certified but asked as to who would verify the JIT’s documents that were not certified. “The JIT has no right to accuse the government of corruption in tax payers’ money.”



The minister also expressed her apprehensions over not making public volume 10 of the 245-page report.  “The volume 10 of the JIT report is being kept secret. The day the volume is made public, everyone will come to know what exactly happened in the JIT,” she added.

Marriyum said the language used by the JIT in its findings also reflected its mala fide intent, adding that the nation was witness to conspiracies being hatched by the opposition and a group of corrupt mafia.

“Those who hung their dirty clothes on [boundary walls of] the Supreme Court are now talking about accountability,” she said in a reference to the PTI whose workers along with those of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek had besieged the red zone of the federal capital during their 2014 marathon sit-in.

She said the PTI was habitual of making issues out of nothing and accused party chief Imran Khan of locking down the accountability commission in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while asking it from others.



“They are calling into question integrity of the person whose three generations have gone through the process of accountability,” she said about PM Nawaz.

The minister also lambasted the PPP and said that it also called for accountability but its government in Sindh had abolished the accountability institutions. She was referring to a recent move by the Sindh government to annul the National Accountability Ordinance in the province.

“Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will emerge victorious in the Supreme Court,” she claimed.