Govt lawyer tenders unconditional apology from SC

Islamabad, July 2 (UNI) A Pakistan government lawyer tendered an unconditional apology to the Supreme Court and withdrew an application for hearing on President Pervez Musharraf's intial referral of misconduct charges against the suspended chief justice.

Malik Muhammad Qayyum had submitted the application based on material of the presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in the court three days go.

Mr Qayyum had told reporters last Thursday that the government would have no objection if the full court bench presently hearing the judge's own petition against his suspesion heard the reference.

The reference is currently under consideration in the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). However, the Supreme Court had stopped its proceedings in May till final judgement on Mr Chaudhry's petition.

But yesterday, Mr Qayyum had to withdraw the application after Mr Chaudhry's counsel Aitzaz Ahsan and the court itself found documentary evidence in the application as ''scandalous and vexacious''.

The 13-member bench also asked the government to pay Rs 100,000 as the cost on account of the application being ''scandalous''.

The court took note of what it observed several unsigned documents and sworn statements with fake dates as well as photographs of cars parked in the compound of Mr Chaudhry's house and termed it as an intrusion in private matters of the judge.

Presiding Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday also noted remarks by Ahsan that intelligence agencies were swarming the Supreme Court and taking on an exercise to spy on the judges.

He banned unauthorised intelligence officials to enter premises of the apex court as well as high courts, adding that they will also not seek record of the courts, nor will they be provided any record if requested by the courts' officials.

He ordered chief of intelligence bureau to inspect premises and instruments in the court as well as judges to check against installation of any bugging device and asked him to submit a report by June 9.

Justice Ramday also suspended licence of an advocate on record, Chaudhry Akhtar Ali, for submitting the application without ascertaining veracity of the documents.

He held Mr Ali responsible for maligning the President, who had filed reference against Mr Chaudhry on March 9 after suspending him.

''The President may not even know what you are filing...You have maligned him by filing scandalous documents,'' Mr Ramday said.

The court also issued notice to law secretary, who had instructed Mr Ali to quickly file the application.

UNI