The Supreme Court on Friday restored changes to the country’s anti-graft laws, accepting the federal government’s appeal against the court’s Sept 15 verdict which struck down those amendments.
CJP Qazi Faez Isa pronounced the verdict reserved by a five-member bench on June 6 after hearing intra-court appeals (ICAs) filed by the federal government and other parties.
In a 16-page verdict, the five judges said they allowed the appeals “by setting aside” the Sept 15 judgment and dismissed the petition filed by Imran. “However, there is no order as to costs,” the order added.
The court also noted that Imran’s petition and the Sept 2023 ruling “failed to establish that the amendments were unconstitutional”. The Sept 15 ruling had restored corruption cases against public representatives, with prominent politicians who allegedly benefited from the amendments being likely to face cases again.
However, a month later, the apex court had been seized with a number of ICAs – moved by the federal government as well as by private citizens Zuhair Ahmed Siddiqui, who was an accused in a corruption case but not a party to the challenges to the NAB amendments case, and Zahid Imran.
The written order observed that the amendments to the NAB laws “did not decriminalise any offence” but “only changed what may be investigated by NAB itself and the forum of the criminal trial”.
Citing Justice Shah’s dissent from the previous ruling, the order noted that the Sept 15 judgment “rewrites the Constitution, and also a number of statutes, by creating an artificial distinction between civil servants and public servants and elected holders of public office and persons in the service of Pakistan, which the minority opinion had also noted”.
The court stressed that “every care should be taken to ensure” that neither the legislature nor the judiciary encroach onto the domain of the other.
It highlighted that while the previous ruling had accepted the limit of Rs100 million under NAB standard operating procedures for cases that NAB “can investigate and send for trial but struck down legislation which had increased the limit to Rs500m”.
The verdict noted that Imran did not approach the SC “in a bona fide manner” and that he “also did not have the requisite locus standi since the amendments neither adversely nor personally affected him (Imran)”. “It does not suffice that the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Article 184(3) of the Constitution is exercised by simply mentioning that one or more fundamental rights are contravened,” the order observed.
It added that the Sept 15 ruling “did not demonstrate how the amendments violated or infringed any of the fundamental rights which were cursorily mentioned therein”.
The verdict recalled that NAB Additional Prosecutor General Chaudhry Mumtaz Yousaf stated that the bureau supports the ICAs. Meanwhile, in his additional note, Justice Minallah “concurred that the impugned majority judgment is liable to be set aside”. However, he dismissed the federal government’s appeal as in his opinion, it was “not competent under section 5 of the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act, 2023”.
At the same time, Justice Minallah held the appeals filed by the private citizens as maintainable and accepted them, consequently setting aside the Sept 15 ruling. Referring to Justice Shah’s dissenting note from last year, Justice Minallah “affirmed to the effect that members of the armed forces and judges of the constitutional courts are not immune from accountability under the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999”.
“The detailed reasons shall be recorded later,” the note said.
