MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st March, 2023) A court in Islamabad issued an arrest warrant on Tuesday for former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan for repeatedly failing to appear in court for a hearing on the alleged illegal sale of state gifts, also known as the Toshakhana case, Pakistani media reported.
Apart from the gifts sale case, Khan was due to attend three other court hearings in Islamabad courts on Tuesday, including on cases of terrorism, prohibited funding and attempted murder, Pakistani broadcaster Geo tv reported. Khan appeared at the three court sessions, securing interim bail in the cases.
The former Pakistani prime minister's lawyer asked the court to release him from the hearing in the Toshakhana case as Khan needed to appear in several other courts on the same day, the report said. However, the judge presiding over the session issued an arrest warrant without bail, as Khan failed to appear before the court despite repeated orders, and adjourned the hearing until March 7.
In October 2022, Pakistan's election commission stripped Khan of his parliamentary mandate as well as the right to be elected and appointed to both the country's Federal and regional legislatures for five years after it found him guilty of selling 52 valuables stored in Toshakhana, the Pakistani state treasury, and hiding information about gifts that he received personally. In April 2022, then-opposition leader, current Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that Khan had sold state treasures in Dubai with a total value of 140 million Pakistani rupees ($630,000 Dollars).
Khan's government dodged a no-confidence motion initiated by opposition parties on April 3, 2022, but failed to survive a no-confidence vote on April 10 following a constitutional crisis. On April 11, Sharif was elected by parliament as the new prime minister.
On October 21, Pakistan's elections commission banned Khan from holding public office for five years for the alleged illegal sale of state gifts and concealment of income during his term. Khan claimed that he had been overthrown in a US-sponsored coup and vowed to seek new elections, leading mass protests against the current government.
