Gulf News

Min­is­ter faces the axe over tus­sle with poor fam­ily

- BY ZUBAIR QURESHI Cor­re­spon­dent

In light of the re­port sub­mit­ted by the Joint In­ves­ti­ga­tion Team (JIT) in a case re­gard­ing mis­use of power and au­thor­ity by a Fed­eral Min­is­ter Azam Khan Swati, Chief Jus­tice Saqib Nisar yes­ter­day de­clared he could be tried un­der Ar­ti­cle 62 (1) (F) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which deals with dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment.

“Is it ap­pro­pri­ate for a ruler or his min­is­ter to get poor women ar­rested over a mi­nor thing,” asked the top judge of the coun­try.

The chief jus­tice re­marked that pro­ceed­ing un­der the Ar­ti­cle 62 (1) (F) would cre­ate aware­ness and the min­is­ter would re­alise he should have shown some mercy for the poor.

Last month, a joint in­ves­ti­ga­tion team, prob­ing the mat­ter of for­mer Is­lam­abad po­lice chief’s trans­fer for not at­tend­ing the phone call of a fed­eral min­is­ter, sub­mit­ted its re­port to the apex court.

It all be­gan when a cow of a poor fam­ily from Ba­jaur liv­ing next to Azam Swati’s farm­house in Is­lam­abad en­tered his gar­den.

This of­fended the min­is­ter’s men to the ex­tent that they at­tacked the fam­ily’s house and later the min­is­ter and son also got in­volved.

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