JIT deliberately omitted Zardari's replies: Bilawal

LAHORE: Chairman Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Sunday sniped at the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that is probing the fake bank accounts case for excluding former president Asif Ali Zardari’s response from its report, ARY News reported.

“We are responding legally to the JIT report in the court while countering political attacks through political maneuvering,” Bilawal Bhutto said while addressing a press conference in Lahore.

“The JIT report is false and forged, and its purpose was nothing but political engineering”, he said, adding that the PPP had fought against oppression in the past as well and could do so in the future also.

“I am hearing about the arrest of Zardari since I was one. We are common and ideological politicians and are not afraid of prisons.”

The PPP chairman said that Zardari’s replies to allegations against him were deliberately omitted from the JIT report. Zardari had replied to the JIT in writing, he added.

“Zardari’s defence is nowhere to be found in the JIT,” he said.

Former president Zardari on Saturday had turned down the allegations levelled against him in the JIT report probing the fake bank accounts case and had asked the Supreme Court to reject the ‘dubious’ report.

In a 17-page document that he submitted in the Supreme Court on Saturday through his counsel, the co-chairman of the PPP said that he had not committed any wrongdoing, adding that the “allegations” in the JIT report were rooted in “victimisation against him”.

Expressing his reservations, he said that the JIT had neither provided copies of the evidence nor the copies of the witnesses’ statements to the respondents.

Bilawal said that Zardari was ready to counter all the corruption references against him and he was the only man who could take other parties forward with him, he maintained.

Disdaining the media reports about a ‘grand alliance’, he said that no measures were being taken at the moment for forging a grand opposition alliance.

Regarding the ongoing debate on the 18th constitutional amendment, he said that the PPP had restored the constitution in its original form through the 18th amendment and there would be no compromise on it.

https://arynews.tv/en/zardari-jit-allegation-against-him/