Nawaz, Maryam targeted to keep out of 2018 polls: Shehbaz

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly and the PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif on Monday said that the party supremo Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz were “targeted” to keep them out of the political process during the 2018 general elections.

Taking to his official Twitter handle, Shehbaz said that “the emergence of a new audio clip of former chief justice shows how Nawaz Sharif [and] Maryam Nawaz were targeted as part of a grand scheme to keep them out of [the] political process. Time has come to right the wrongs inflicted on them. The nation looks forward to [the] justice system.”

The PML-N president was referring to the alleged viral audio clip on social media in which former chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) Saqib Nisar purportedly passed instructions to sentence ex-premier Nawaz.

Read: Ex-CJ terms audio clip favouring Sharif ‘fabricated’

However, on Sunday, Justice (retd) Nisar termed the alleged leaked audio clip of his conversation with an unidentified person as “fabricated” and contrary to fact.

The former CJP’s reaction came after a Pakistani journalist claimed in a story published on a local website that Justice (retd) Nisar, as the top judge of the country, instructed his subordinates to sentence the former premier and his daughter Maryam at the behest of “institutions” in 2018.

The controversy unfolded after a story published in a local newspaper in the past week stated that Nawaz and Maryam were kept in jail till the general elections in 2018 on the orders of Saqib Nisar.

Following the publication of the news, Islamabad High Court (IHC) Chief Justice Athar Minallah on Nov 16 observed that the IHC would not hesitate in proceeding against Nisar, if anyone or ex-chief justice of the Gilgit Appellate Court, Rana M Shamim, bring forth any evidence against the former top judge for manipulating judicial proceedings against the Sharif family in the Panamagate case.