By Muhammad Luqman
An anti-graft court in Pakistan has indicted the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif over allegations involving his family’s ownership of expensive London property,
Nawaz Sharif, who was disqualified from office on July 28 after failing to declare a Rs 250000 income from a Dubai-based company, was indicted alongside his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son in law, Capt (rtd) Muhammad Safdar.
All three pleaded not guilty. After the court made indictment, their lawyer read a statement saying the charges were “not only groundless, baseless and unfounded but also frivolous, and on top of that we are being denied our right to fair trial. The charges are being framed on a report that is incomplete and controversial. It will go down in history as mockery of justice and travesty of justice.”
Nawaz Sharif is currently in British capital, London where his wife is undergoing surgery.
Since his ejection from power, Nawaz Sharif has worked to reassert his authority. This month his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), re-elected him as its leader despite the controversy, after he ran unopposed.
On September 17, in what was widely seen as a vote on Sharif’s legacy, his wife, Kulsoom Nawaz, narrowly clinched a local election in Lahore, Sharif’s stronghold, after a campaign run by their daughter Maryam.
The Panama Papers showed the Sharifs’ London real estate was bought with offshore wealth in Sharif’s children’s names while they were still minors.
