ISLAMABAD - Senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Pervaiz Rashid said Tuesday that legal action should be taken against former chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) Saqib Nisar as his “crime was not less than selling the motherland”. The demand came hours after an audio leak surfaced allegedly of former CJP Saqib Nisar. Addressing Nisar in a series of tweets, he said: “You [Nisar] are guilty of the murder of the Constitution and the law by employing judicial engineering tactics.” Rashid said that Nisar’s tenure as chief justice was remembered for “judicial martial law”, during which “bigotry, favouritism, and conspiracies flourished”. Earlier on Tuesday, an alleged audio leak featuring former chief justice Nisar and lawyer Khawaja Tariq Raheem came to the fore. In the purported audio leak, the former top judge is speaking about the judgement of a seven-member bench on a “suo motu” notice taken by the apex court in 2010 to Raheem and asking him to look into the matter.
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Nisar is purportedly heard telling the details of the judgement to Raheem and saying that it had the “way out” for them. Moreover, Nisar also refers to the ouster of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Sardar Tanveer Ilyas as the Azad Jammu and Kashmir prime minister over contempt of court. At this, the senior lawyer said that they were planning to file another contempt case. Nisar asked the lawyer to file a contempt of court case against Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, via Muneer Ahmed. Nisar told media that the conversation with Raheem was private and he does not know when it was held and which case it was about. “It is against the right to privacy that a conversation between two people is shared like this,” he said. The former top judge asked if he had “sold Kashmir or made a deal about Pakistan”. Reacting to the audio leak, Rashid said Nisar had violated the oath that bound him to decide cases impartially and transparently in accordance with the law.
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“However, there is concrete evidence to the contrary, which proves you are biased, impartial and conspiratorial [and] a lawbreaker to the extent of it being criminal.” The PML-N leader said there was only one way to save children’s future from the likes of the former CJP — for Nisar to be prosecuted and made into a lesson. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had strongly criticised Nisar for “sabotaging” development projects introduced by the PML-N government. The ex-CJP has denied the allegations.