Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday filed an application urging Chief Justice Aamer Farooq of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to step down from all benches overseeing cases involving him.
In the application submitted at the IHC, Khan expressed a lack of confidence in Chief Justice Farooq, alleging that since assuming the role of chief justice, Farooq seemed to function as a “one-man high court,” personally involving himself in every single and division bench handling cases related to Khan, including intra-court appeals.
Khan’s application highlighted that Chief Justice Farooq had presided over 120 applications from the former PTI chairman, claiming that the trial against Khan in the Toshakhana case was conducted against legal principles due to the direct involvement of the IHC chief justice.
The document mentioned that Chief Justice Farooq oversaw a case concerning the number of dependents listed by Khan in his election nomination papers. After objections were raised by the applicant regarding the single bench handling the matter, a three-member bench was formed, which, by a majority decision, dismissed the case against the former prime minister.
The application noted that Chief Justice Farooq not only removed the majority decision from the court’s website but also issued a press release. It emphasized that Khan had lost trust in the IHC CJ and did not anticipate fair judgment from him. Therefore, the application requested Chief Justice Farooq to recuse himself from all cases related to Khan.
Recently, an accountability court in Islamabad rejected Imran Khan’s pre-arrest bail plea in the Toshakhana case, and the anti-corruption watchdog plans to execute arrest orders and seek the accused’s remand.
In another development, Imran Khan and the party’s Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi were indicted in the cypher case once more on Wednesday.
(Inputs from ANI)