ISLAMABAD: The federal government has approached Islamabad High Court (IHC) for physical custody of Shahbaz Gill saying that the ongoing investigation against him could not be completed without it.

Islamabad Advocate General Jahangir Khan Jadoon Saturday filed a petition, citing Shehbaz Gill, the sessions judge, Islamabad and the judicial magistrate as respondents.

Acting Chief Justice Amir Farooq will hear the petition Monday (Aug 15).

The petition said that the investigation in the case was not complete, according to the prosecution and therefore, the judicial magistrate had “completely halted” the ongoing investigation by remanding Gill into judicial custody.

Resultantly, it said, the prosecution’s case was “seriously prejudiced” and it could not bring further results of the investigation on record.

The petition said that the sessions judge’s order was “perverse and without jurisdiction” since Shabbir passed a judicial order, instead of an administrative order and thus had the power to exercise his revision jurisdiction if any illegality came to the court’s knowledge.

Jadoon argued that the judicial magistrate did not take into account that “valuable evidence will not be collected” unless Gill cooperated with the investigation and the police had yet to recover his cellphone and the data from it.

He added that Gill’s physical custody was also required to obtain information about the other suspects in the case. Jadoon argued that the judicial magistrate had not realised the “gravity of the offence” and sent Gill to judicial custody without considering the police’s request for his physical remand on merit.

The petition said the orders of the two judges were “capricious, perverse and against the provision of applicable law”, adding that if it was not accepted for hearing, then the state institution would face “irreparable loss” and Gill would be “acquitted”.

It requested the IHC to set aside the orders of the two judges, grant Gill’s physical custody to the investigating agency for the collection of further evidence and declare that the judicial magistrate’s verdict was a judicial order and open to revision by the sessions judge and the IHC.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022