Pakistan opposition leader moves court seeking daily hearings in defamation case against Imran Khan

PML-N president and Leader of the opposition in the Pakistan National Assembly, Shehbaz Sharif said that he has appealed to a sessions court to conduct daily hearings for his defamation suit against Prime Minister Imran Khan.

In a tweet, Sharif alleged that he filed the defamation case against Khan for “his blatant lies of offering him Rs 10 billion”.

“In a defamation case that I filed against Imran Khan for his blatant lies of offering him Rs 10 billion, he has sought 33 deferments so far. I have petitioned the court to hear the case on daily basis. IK failed to submit his written reply to the court despite the passage of three years,” he wrote.

In 2017, Sharif sent a Rs 10 billion defamation notice to PTI Chairman Imran Khan.

The petition, filed under Sections 4 and 9 of the Defamation Ordinance, 2002, said that Imran falsely accused Sharif of making him a financial offer for his “silence over the Panama Papers case”.

It stated that “the facts and circumstances giving rise to the filing of the instant suit are that since the last week of April 2017, the Defendant (Imran Khan) started uttering, spreading and resorting to the publication, communication and circulation of maliciously false, baseless and unfounded oral statements and representations against the plaintiff (Shehbaz).”

According to the suit, Khan claimed that Sharif “offered to pay a sum of (Rs 10 billion) to the defendant in exchange for his withdrawing/backing-off from, or remaining silent on the issue of the Panama Papers’ case”.

In April 2017, Khan had alleged that he had been made an offer in the Panama case. He made the comments while addressing a gathering at Shaukat Khanum Hospital in Lahore.

“Just imagine how much money he offered me to be silent – Rs 10 billion! If he can offer me this much money, just imagine how much he could offer to others. That is why if we do not maintain public pressure on this issue, then after two months it will be dragged to the next year,” Khan was quoted as saying.

In an interview after making the comments, Khan did not disclose the name of the person who made the offer, but said the individual was close to the Punjab Chief Minister. Sharif had served as Punjab Chief Minister from 2013 to 2018.