A local court in Islamabad issued non-bailable arrest warrants for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan on Wednesday in a case brought against him for allegedly threatening a female judge.
Magistrate Malik Aman announced the reserved verdict, rejecting the plea Imran’s lawyer made to be excused from appearing in court, and gave orders to make sure Imran was there on April 18.
The case is still pending at a lower court in the federal capital, despite the Islamabad High Court (IHC) having withdrawn its show cause notice to Imran and stated that it was satisfied with the apology and the PTI Chairman’s behavior.
The prosecutor Raja Rizwan Abbasi had argued earlier in the hearing that the ousted prime should be summoned to the court for the subsequent hearing.
Imran’s attorney Ali Gohar had argued that the PTI Chairman would appear before the court on March 30 for the Toshakhana case and asked that the court set the same date for this case’s subsequent hearing.
He had requested that the warrant’s suspension be upheld and promised to use the civil courts to change the March 29 arrest deadline to March 30.
As the warrant listed March 29 as the date, the court had insisted that this was a “strange request,” but the solicitor insisted on March 30.
The prosecution had questioned whether the plea meant that the court would “dare” not issue an arrest warrant and said that good cause had to be shown for doing so.
The accused was a “blue-eyed boy” of the courts but even he was “not favored that much,” the prosecutor said.
