Court rejects adjournment plea in Musharraf case

A special court in Pakistan Thursday resumed hearing of the high treason case against former president Pervez Musharraf and rejected his counsel's request to adjourn the proceedings.

The court, headed by Sindh High Court's Justice Faisal Arab, rejected the request of the former president's counsel who had sought to adjourn the hearing, the Dawn online reported.

Rana Ejaz, Musharraf's counsel, requested the court to adjourn proceedings in the case till Monday, as the former army chief's legal defence team was engaged with the Supreme Court's hearing of the review petition filed against the apex court's earlier ruling which declared Musharraf's Nov 3, 2007 actions of imposing an emergency unconstitutional.

Rejecting the defence counsel's plea, the bench instructed the prosecutors to present their arguments on objections to Musharraf's medical report.

Akram Sheikh, chief prosecuting lawyer, termed Musharraf's medical report a piece of paper and said despite the passage of 28 days, the former president had neither undergone electrocardiography nor any enzyme test.

Sheikh described the medical report as "unprofessional".

On Wednesday, the court had issued notice to the former president's lawyers on the prosecuting team's request to summon for cross-examination the chief of the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology in Rawalpindi, where Musharraf is undergoing treatment for a heart ailment, and adjourned the hearing of the case to Thursday.

The former military ruler was rushed to hospital following heart problems while going to the court Jan 2.

The Nawaz Sharif-led government set up the special court to try the former army chief on charges of high treason for imposing emergency and subverting the constitution in 2007.

Musharraf has been charged with abrogating, subverting, suspending, holding in abeyance and attempting to conspire against the 1973 Constitution by declaring emergency and detaining judges of the superior courts.