LHC misled by the petitioners, claims govt’s counsel

LAHORE: The Punjab government on Tuesday told a full bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) that heirs of the Model Town incident’s victims and their lawyers misled a single bench for getting a favourable order for the release of Justice Najafi’s report on the tragic incident.



Advocate Khawaja Haris, counsel for the Punjab government, arguing on the government’s appeal against the decision of releasing the Model Town inquiry, said the petitioners before the single bench had not approached the court with clean hands.

He said the provincial government was not given the opportunity to file its written reply especially on a point that the inquiry report was a judicial document. He said before the issuance of the impugned verdict, different single benches had referred three different petitions on the subject to a full bench already seized with the similar matter.



However, he said, in the instant case the lawyers of the petitioners had deceived by telling the single bench that the matter pending before the full bench was entirely different. Advocate Haris said justice was not seen to be done while passing the verdict for the release of Justice Najafi’s report. He said the impugned judgment was a classic case of misdirection in law, unreasonable and omitted to take into consideration the settled laws.

However, the full bench headed by Justice Abid Aziz Sheikh adjourned further hearing till October 10. Haris is yet to start his arguments on the merits of the impugned judgment as he has been highlighting procedural flaws committed by the single bench taking up and deciding the petition that demanded release of the inquiry report, withheld by the government.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2017.