ISLAMABAD: The registrar office of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday replaced the Prevention of Electronic Crimes judge hearing video scandal of former accountability court judge Mohammad Arshad Malik and appointed him as district and sessions judge (DSJ) West Islamabad.

DSJ West Sohail Nasir was repatriated to the Lahore High Court (LHC).

He, however, would continue to work as director general monitoring of model courts.

Prevention of Electronic Crimes Court Judge Tahir Mehmood was hearing the video scandal case and recently dismissed an application filed by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) seeking transfer of the case to the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC).

Judge Mehmood also directed the FIA to submit complete challan in this matter enabling the court to commence trial against the persons nominated by the former accountability court judge.

FIA, however, challenged the decision of the judge before the Islamabad High Court (IHC).

IHC on Wednesday restrained the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Court from proceeding in this matter and put off the hearing on FIA’s petition till next week.

On July 6, the PML-N released the video of Judge Malik at a presser in which he was shown confessing convicting Nawaz Sharif under duress.

The judge, however, accused PML-N’s activists Nasir Butt and others including Nasir Janjua, Khurram Yousaf and Mahar Ghulam Jilani for blackmailing him because of his ‘immoral’ video.

In a related development, the IHC chief justice dismissed a petition filed by Nasir Butt against officials of Pakistani High Commission in UK for not verifying documents related to judge video scandal.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2019