ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar Tuesday said he knew very well under whose supervision samples of alcohol bottles recovered from former Sindh minister Sharjeel Memon’s hospital room were changed.
The top judge made these remarks while hearing a case at the Supreme Court.
As the hearing went underway, the Sindh chief secretary termed the blood report, which gave a clean chit to Sharjeel Memon over alcohol consumption, suspicious. “It seems that the report has been tampered with,” the Sindh chief secretary said, adding: “We will submit a report after looking into the matter with the help of the CCTV footage of the hospital and the room.
On Monday, a test report by Chief Chemical Examiner Dr Zahid Ansari revealed that the bottles “did not contain alcohol”.
According to the report, “one of the bottles contained honey and the other cooking oil”.
However, the Agha Khan University Hospital issued a statement, clarifying that the hospital only received Sharjeel Memon’s blood samples from another hospital and could not confirm if it was drawn from the patient.
During the hearing, Justice Nisar said, “I had not called for an examination of the contents of the bottles found from Memon’s room.” The chief justice further said that he “saw no bottle of honey” in the former Sindh information minister’s room.
He continued, “Sharjeel Memon never denied that there was alcohol in the bottles, he just said that were not his.”
The apex court also decided to transfer Sharjeel Memon to a prison in Punjab.
Justice Nisar added that as the provincial government was not cooperating, Sharjeel Memon would be transferred to Punjab and further remarked that judges should not worry as the constitution granted them “immense power” to enforce judgements.
On Saturday, the top judge made a surprise visit to a room of Dr Ziauddin Hospital in Clifton where Sharjeel Memon was staying and reportedly found two bottles of “liquor”.
The room had been declared a sub-jail by the provincial authorities.
Following the visit of the top judge, Sharjeel Memon was sent back to Karachi’s Central Jail. He was earlier shifted from a jail to the private hospital in view of his ‘illness’. Later a case was registered against Sharjeel Memon, who has been facing charges of misappropriating billions of rupees during his tenure as Sindh information minister in the last PPP government.
Published in Daily Times, September 5th 2018.
