Pakistan court rejects Ishaq Dar's petition against his indictment in Panama Papers case

Dar had challenged his indictment in the Islamabad High Court yesterday for possessing assets beyond his known sources of income.

Pakistan's Finance Minister Ishaq Dar (Photo | AP)

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani court today rejected a petition by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar against his indictment by an anti-corruption court in the Panama Papers scandal.

Dar, 67, had challenged his indictment in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) yesterday for possessing assets beyond his known sources of income. Dar's counsel Khawaja Harris asked the court that the indictment by the Accountability Court was against the law as it failed to give enough time to the defence lawyer to prepare the case.

The two-judge bench of Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb rejected the petition by observing that the Accountability Court is an independent forum and indictment could not be challenged. The anti-corruption watchdog National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had on September 8 filed a case against Dar for possessing assets beyond known sources of income following the July 28 verdict of the Supreme Court.

Dar was indicted on September 27 and the Accountability Court announced that it will start his trial on October 4.