Bushra Bibi, the wife of former prime minister Imran Khan, filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court on Thursday to challenge a call-up notice issued by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in connection with a fresh inquiry related to the Toshakhana case–related to state gifts.
The petition has been scheduled for hearing today (Thursday) before a two-member bench headed by IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq. Bushra’s legal team has requested the court to suspend the NAB call-up notice until a decision is reached on the petition.
Earlier, the NAB Rawalpindi summoned Imran Khan on April 16 in relation to the above mentioned case.
The respondents named in the petition include the NAB chairman, NAB deputy director, and superintendent of Adiala Jail.
Imran Khan was accused of selling state gifts on the market to make money. He was entitled to retain gifts from Toshakhana —a state repository where all the gifts received by government officials are deposited before they could take them home after completing the due process — but not to sell them on the market to make a profit, claims the Election Commission of Pakistan, which filed a petition against the former prime minister accusing him of “corrupt practice.”
Last month, the Islamabad High Court suspended the 14-year sentences handed out to Khan and his wife Bushra in the Toshakhana reference.
The high court also ordered the former prime minister and former first lady to be released from prison in the case.
Khan and Bushra had been sentenced to 14 years in prison in the Toshakhana case earlier this year. The PTI founder has been tangled in more than 200 legal cases since he was ousted in April 2022, in what he said was a campaign to keep him from power.
Khan, 71, remains jailed on two other cases including treason and illegal marriage with sentences stretching up to a decade.