Hearing of corruption case: Khosa requests Justice Ramday to recuse him from the bench

Former Attorney General (AG) Latif Khosa on Thursday filed an application in Supreme Court, requesting Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday to recuse him from the bench hearing corruption charges against him.
The Advisor to the Prime Minister and former AG contended that on December 29, 1998, Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday while hearing a case of late Benazir Bhutto's political secretary had uttered "derogatory" and "insulting" remarks against him.
The application said, "I lodged a verbal complaint to the then Chief Justice Ajmal Mian against Justice Ramday and moved resolution in Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA) and Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), which were approved with thumping majority. Thereafter, for quite sometime Justice Ramday declined to hear my cases, which were not fixed by the office before him.".
"Though my track record is of a complete subservient of judiciary, as I am wedded to this profession from three generations, ever since my aforesaid resolution, I have never felt comfortable and hardly has had my client's case succeeded before Justice Ramday," said Latif Khosa in the application.
Khosa further said, "Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday along with Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on May 30, 2009 at a lawyers' function in Lahore did not stop some lawyers from behaving insultingly with me, though I went there as AG and Chairman Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) on proper invitation."
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry had constituted a five-member bench comprising Justices Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, Nasir-ul-Mulk, Justice Raja Fayyaz Ahmed, Jawwad S. Khawaja and Ghulam Rabbani for hearing the case of contempt notices issued to some judges of superior courts. The same bench would hear Khosa's case on Friday (today).
Khosa was sacked as AG in October, after a complaint of corruption was lodged against him. However, he was appointed as Advisor to the PM. Dr Mazhar Jamal, wife of Hamid Maghfoor Shah (complainant) had accused Khosa of taking a bribe of Rs 3 million from Maghfoor for getting decision in a case in his favour, when Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar was chief justice of the Supreme Court.
However, he lost the case and Maghfoor was sentenced to five years imprisonment and was fined over Rs 3 million and $200,000 on corruption charges. On October 21, during the first hearing of the case, the former AG had accused Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry of getting him removed. The court had asked Khosa to submit a written reply to the allegations of corruption in two weeks.
Chief Justice had turned down Khosa's request for an in-camera proceeding with an observation: "Since finger has been raised at the judges, therefore, everyone should know about the proceedings." Khosa dismissed the allegations as "baseless" and "unfounded", saying that being a practising lawyer for 40 years he could not even think of getting bribe in the name of judges. He alleged that he was being scandalised in the media.