Pakistan court defers indictment of Imran, Bushra in graft case till Feb 27

A Pakistani accountability court has deferred the indictment of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi in a Rs 50 million corruption case till February 27, according to a media report on Saturday.

The court on Friday deferred the indictment of Khan and Bushra in the Al-Qadir Trust case filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as the Islamabad High Court (IHC) is set to take up appeals against their conviction in Toshakhana and the Cipher cases on February 26, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Judge Nasir Javed Rana was hearing the proceedings of the case in Rawalpindi's high-security Adiala Jail where Khan, the 71-year-old founder of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party is incarcerated.

Bushra Bibi, 49, is imprisoned at Khan's Bani Gala residence in Islamabad after an accountability court sentenced the couple to 14 years in jail in the Toshakhana corruption case.

The Al-Qadir Trust case pertains to the settlement of 190 million pounds, about Rs 50 billion, which the UK's National Crime Agency sent to Pakistan after recovering the amount from Pakistani property tycoon Malik Riaz Hussain.

Being the prime minister then, Khan, instead of depositing the money in the national treasury, allowed the businessman to use the amount to partly settle a fine of about Rs 450 billion imposed by the Supreme Court some years ago.

The tycoon, in return, allegedly gifted about 57 acres of land to a trust set up by Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, to establish the Al-Qadir University in the Sohawa area of the Jhelum district of Punjab.

Hussain, his son Ahmed Ali Riaz, Mirza Shehzad Akbar, and Zulfi Bukhari are also among the suspects in the case, but instead of joining the investigation and subsequent court proceedings, they absconded and were subsequently declared as proclaimed offenders.