Assets reference: Zardari unable to appear in court due to food poisoning

RAWALPINDI: Former President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday failed to appear before a Rawalpindi accountability court which had summoned him in a corruption case accusing the PPP co-chairman of not submitting correct details of his wealth.

Appearing before the court today, his lawyer Farooq H Naek pleaded that his client had travelled to Islamabad for the hearing, but could not appear before the court due to ill health.

Naek said the former president was suffering from a bout of food poisoning, to which the bench accepted his exemption from attending court today and adjourned the hearing to May 13.

“Zardari sb came to Islamabad from Karachi yesterday. I met him last night and was with him for an hour. We discussed the case and I told him the court had set the time for the hearing at 11am,” Naek told reporters after the meeting.

“This morning he called and said that he suffering from food poisoning, vomiting and was also running a fever. He asked me to plead to the court to pardon him for not being able to appear today due to ill health,” he said.

Speaking about the reference, Naek said his client had been implicated in a false case. He said that Zardari has previously faced the courts and will appear before the courts to face legal proceedings again.




This is the second time that Zardari has failed to appear before the Rawalpindi accountability court since the five-year-old reference was reopened last month.

During the last hearing on April 27, Naek pleaded that the accused had not yet received any summons while he had appeared before the court seeing the news in the press.

Subsequently, the court directed to issue summons again to the accused to appear in person before the court on May 5.