Former first lady Bushra Bibi. PHOTO: ARCHIVE
ISLAMABAD:
An application has been submitted to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) seeking suspension of the sentence of Bushra Bibi, wife of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, in the Al-Qadir Trust case on medical grounds.
As the IHC division bench headed by Chief Justice Sardar Sarfraz Dogar resumes hearing the pleas of Bushra Bibi and Imran seeking suspension of their sentences on April 22, their lawyer Salman Safdar has filed an application to explain their health condition.
The court has been requested to proceed to hear and decide, as to priority and merits, the plaintiff’s request for suspension of sentence in the interest of justice and fair play.
The application has been pending before the IHC for more than a year. The petition further requests the IHC to summon the Jail Superintendent, Deputy Jail Superintendent and Head of Ophthalmology Department of Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital, Rawalpindi, and direct them to appear with complete medical history including operation notes, diagnosis, treatment history and all relevant documents related to the surgery performed on Bushra Bibi.
“The applicant be immediately transferred to Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital, Rawalpindi, for appropriate post-operative treatment under continuous medical supervision, and the concerned prison authorities be directed to ensure regular, meaningful and unhindered access to the applicant’s lawyers and family members in accordance with the law and prior judicial instructions,” it is further prayed,” the petition states.
“Bushra Bibi has been subjected to prolonged incarceration, repeated delays in the resolution of her request for a suspended sentence, continued denial of access to a lawyer and now serious medical deterioration culminating in a surgical procedure performed under undisclosed circumstances,” he added.
“All of these factors, viewed together, establish extreme hardship, violation of fundamental rights and manifest abuse of process, entitling the applicant to immediate judicial relief.”
The application noted that Bushra Bibi, as a woman, convicted of “accusations of complicity” and sentenced to a sentence of seven years, is entitled to bail on legal and humanitarian grounds, particularly in circumstances where her appeal has been pending for a considerable period of over a year and her health has deteriorated significantly during her imprisonment. He stated that continuing to detain the plaintiff in such circumstances would serve “no useful purpose” and would amount to perpetuating irreparable harm.
“During the pendency of the proceedings, the prison authorities abruptly and informally informed the plaintiff’s lawyer and her family that the plaintiff had undergone eye surgery due to certain complications. It is a matter of grave concern and grave alarm that neither the lawyer nor any member of the plaintiff’s family were informed or consulted prior to the said medical procedure, nor was any prior disclosure made about any deterioration in the plaintiff’s medical condition that might necessitate such surgical intervention. “The entire process appears. “It has been carried out with complete opacity, without adhering to basic standards of transparency and without providing the applicant the benefit of consulting with her attorney or her family,” the application states.
