The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday accepted the federal government’s appeal in a case related to audio leaks of Bushra Bibi, spouse of PTI founder Imran Khan and Najamul Saqib, son of former chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar and ordered the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to stop proceedings till further orders.
A two-member bench of the top court comprising Justice Amin-Ud-Din Khan and Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan heard the Centre’s appeal against the IHC order in the audio leaks case today.
At the outset of the hearing, Additional Attorney General Amir Rehman apprised the apex court that the relevant authorities had been stopped from phone tapping in an IHC order issued on May 29.
He further said that the intelligence agencies were unable to perform counterintelligence due to the IHC’s ruling which also restricted the agencies from arresting any terrorists.
The government’s lawyer said that the high court had also stopped the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) from phone tapping and call data recording (CDR).
He added that the high court exceeded its jurisdiction under Article 199 of the Constitution in contradiction to the top court’s two verdicts.
It is worth mentioning that on May 29, IHC’s Justice Babar Sattar had barred telecom companies from recording phone calls and data which disabled the intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ surveillance against criminals and terrorists.
After the May 29 ruling, the IHC gave a subsequent verdict on the Islamabad police’s plea on June 25 in which the court allowed the telecom companies to share suspects’ data with the police for post-crime probe, however, it restricted the cellular firms from facilitating LEAs with surveillance.
