Fawad rebuts audio leak of him purportedly discussing judges

Tarar urges SJC to take notice of allegations against judges

Islamabad: Another alleged audio leak surfaced on Friday, this time linked to senior PTI leader Chaudhry Fawad – who has categorically rejected it – purportedly talking about superior court judges.

“I have no connection with this audio,” tweeted Fawad.
The leaked conversation, first publicly shared by journalists on social media, shows pictures of Chaudhry and his brother Faisal Hussain, identifying them as the people behind the voices talking about arranging a meeting between judges of the superior courts – a conversation that Chaudhry said never took place.

A voice, implied to be Fawad’s, can be heard saying that a senior judge of the Lahore High Court wants to meet a top judge of the Supreme Court. The audio also makes reference to one of the judges linked to an earlier audio leak.

The voice suggested to be that of Fawad’s can also be heard asking the other person to “get four more sections imposed in a case on Tarar so that he feels some pressure”.

While the clip only mentions Tarar and not the full name, it appears to be a reference to PML-N leader Atta Tarar who was named in a hooliganism case filed during the previous Punjab government, led by Chaudhry Parvez Elahi.

The clip – which appears to be a stitched version of different audio bits extracted from a single conversation – has not been independently verified by Dawn.com. The timing of the alleged audio is also not clear from the recording.

In his rebuttal to the audio, the PTI leader dismissed the recording as fake. “Another fake audio has been thrown in the market in my name. This audio has nothing to do with me,” said the PTI leader, adding that neither did he meet the judges mentioned in the clip nor did he ask any of them to help each other.

The latest clip comes a few weeks after PTI Chairman Imran Khan wrote a letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial and other Supreme Court judges, and sought “enforcement” of the fundamental rights of the public – including the Constitution’s Article 14 (fundamental right to privacy) – in connection with a series of private telephonic conversations of political leaders that have surfaced online over the past few months.

Imran had written a letter to the top judge after a phone call of PTI Central Punjab president Dr Yasmin Rashid with the former CCPO Ghulam Mehmood Dogar was released on social media. In the leaked audio, the PTI leader was allegedly speaking to the police officer, asking if he had received the posting orders after he was reinstated as the Lahore CCPO by a Supreme Court bench. As per the audio clip, the police officer replied that no orders had reached him.

It was only the latest in a spree of private conversations – mostly involving opposition leaders and their allies – that had been leaked.

In his letter, Imran said “various ex-public officials, myself included, and even private members of the public have suffered” from those leaks while specifically mentioning PTI Senator Azam Swati’s alleged inappropriate video leak. He had termed the leaks to be “unverified, edited, tampered, pieced together and even fabricated conversations’.

This audio leak also comes on the heels of two alleged audio clips of Elahi on social media in which he is supposedly giving directions to two men regarding fixing certain cases before a particular apex court judge.

Meanwhile, Special Assistant to Prime Minister Attaullah Tarar on Friday urged the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) to take notice of the allegations that surfaced against senior judges in a leaked audio clip of PTI leader Chaudhry Fawad and his brother Advocate Faisal Chaudhry.

A hearing should be scheduled in the SJC on the allegations related to judges, Tarar said Friday, referring to the latest audio clip.

“Which truck are they talking about in the audio leaked today?” Tarar questioned. “We see that some respected judges are leaning towards Imran Khan,” he alleged.

In the latest audio, a man, believed to be Fawad, can be heard talking to another man, believed to be Fawad’s brother, about contacting two top judges.

Elaborating on the leaked audio, Tarar said that there is talk of “punishing us” in it. If there is a duplicate system of justice in the country, the situation will worsen, he warned.

The SAPM asked what harm would an investigation into this matter do as serious allegations were leveled against a person. “Fawad Chaudhry is working as a messenger for the court[s]” he claimed.