ISLAMABAD: Criticizing former anti-corruption judge Arshad Malik, who was removed from the post following the surfacing of a video referring to Nawaz Sharif's sentencing, Pakistan's Supreme Court on Friday said that only the Islamabad High Court can decide whether to use the controversial clipping to give relief to the jailed former prime minister.
The apex court made the observation while giving verdict on a set of petitions about the video scandal involving Malik, who awarded seven years of imprisonment to 69-year-old Sharif in Al-Azizia steel mills case on December 24 last year.
The video, which was released by Sharif's daughter last month, purportedly showed him saying that he was pressurised to convict the former prime minister in the graft case.
"His admitted conduct emerging from that press release and the affidavit stinks and the stench of such stinking conduct has the tendency to bring bad name to the entire judiciary as an institution," Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa said in the judgement.
"His sordid and disgusting conduct has made the thousands of honest, upright, fair and proper judges in the country hang their heads in shame," Khosa wrote in the judgement.
Speaking about the issue of conviction of Sharif, the court left it to the Islamabad High Court (IHC), where Sharif challenged the conviction, to decide.
He said that only the IHC could alone at present "maintain, alter or set aside such conviction and sentence on the basis of the evidence brought on the record."