LAHORE: A Lahore district court on Sunday sent PTI President Parvez Elahi on 14-day judicial remand, rejecting the Anti-Corruption Establishment request for his physical remand in a case pertaining to illegal recruitments in the Punjab Assembly.
A written order on the judgement is yet to be issued.
Elahi was presented before the court today by ACE officials amid tight security after he was re-arrested for the second time in two days on Saturday. However, he was taken away by ACE officials after the court reserved its decision on the the authority’s plea for his 14-day physical remand.
According to an ACE spokesperson, the case of the illegal appointments alleges that Elahi recruited 12 Grade-17 officers in the Punjab Assembly against merit.
“He got changed the results of these candidates belonging to Gujrat and Mandi Bahauddin. We have collected evidence and also arrested Secretary Punjab Assembly Rai Mumtaz Hussain in this regard,” he told Dawn.
Judicial Magistrate Ghulam Murtaza Virk presided over today’s proceedings.
At the outset of the hearing, the ACE expressed a lack of confidence in judicial magistrate Virk, with one of the establishment’s director, Jam Salahuddin, saying they had received instructions that he should not hear the case.
For his part, the judge said, “A campaign is being run against me. I don’t have any account on Facebook. I don’t have any account on social media.”
The context of this conversation remains unclear.
Following this exchange, the ACE official told the magistrate that they needed some time to file their request with a sessions judge for changing the judge in this case.
“I have received the instructions and we will submit a request to a sessions judge, but we need some time for that,” he said.
At that, Elahi’s lawyer, Rana Intizar, argued that the court timings were about to end and said they would get a case registered against the ACE director if Elahi was “taken away again today”.
Then, on the ACE official’s request, judge Virk suspended the session for a while.
After the hearing resumed, the ACE’s legal counsel presented his arguments upon which the judge said that the FIR mentioned the results of Open Testing Service were changed.
“Where are those changed papers?” he asked.
The ACE counsel said the results of the testing service were “tampered” with and were still available online.
Then Elahi’s lawyer began presenting his arguments, saying that Punjab Assembly Secretary Rai Mumtaz, who was also arrested in the case yesterday, wanted to say something.
The judge subsequently reserved his decision on ACE’s request for Elahi’s physical remand.
Announcing its decision later, the court rejected the ACE’s request for Elahi’s physical remand and sent him to jail on 14-day judicial remand.
