LHC turns down bail plea of Hamza's 'frontman'

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday turned down a petition by Shahid Rafiq, an alleged frontman of Leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Assembly Hamza Shehbaz, in a money laundering case.

Headed by Justice Baqar Ali Najafi, a two-judge bench of the high court dismissed the petition after hearing arguments from both prosecution and defence sides.

The suspect’s lawyer contended before the court that his client has been accused of making transactions of millions of rupees into the Sharif family’s accounts from the United Kingdom.

The accusations hurled by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) at Shahid Rafiq are fabricated and ill-founded, he claimed, pleading with the judges to order his client’s release on bail.

However, the NAB prosecutor, opposing the bail request, said the suspect was involved in transferring ill-gotten money into the Sharif family’s accounts.

It is noteworthy that suspect Mushtaq Chene, another frontman of Hamza has turned an approver in the money laundering case.

Last month, a prosecutor told a Lahore judicial magistrate that the suspect was presented before the National Accountability Bureau chairman in Islamabad, who allowed his application to become an approver in the case.

He pleaded with the magistrate to record confessional statement of the suspect under Section 164 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).