The hearing was restarted after Additional Sessions Judge Faizan Haider Gillani said that Mr. Chaudhry’s attorney, Babar Awan, was prepared to present his case. The judge responded by asking how he could hear the case without access to the case file. Later, he postponed the hearing until today at 10 am.
The bail petition was submitted on Friday after a federal capital judge rejected the prosecution’s request for an extension of Mr. Chaudhry’s physical detention and instead transferred him to the Adiala Jail for a 14-day judicial hold.
The PTI leader’s legal representative had earlier requested post-arrest release in the court of Judicial Magistrate Waqas Ahmed Raja. The judge, however, declined to hear the case because he felt he had no right to do so. Later, a plea was filed in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Faizan Haider Gillai, who sent notifications to the parties and postponed the hearing until this coming Saturday.
According to the bail petition, Mr. Chaudhry “has been falsely implicated in the instant case by the complainant with the malafide intention and ulterior motives just to harass, pressurise and blackmail the present petitioner, whereas the allegations levelled in the FIR are absolutely false, frivolous and baseless and the petitioner is quite innocent. Furthermore, the petitioner has no connection to or issue with the commission.
The petitioner wants the remedy of bail after detention from this Honorable Court since, according to the document, he was detained in the aforementioned FIR “illegally unlawfully and without any Justification in negation to the law and the petitioner’s Constitutional rights.”
