JIT report against Zardari false and forged: Bilawal

Badin: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Sunday sniped at the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) over excluding former president Asif Ali Zardari’s response from its report on fake bank accounts references. “We are responding legally to the JIT report in the court. While, countering political attacks through political manoeuvring,” Bilawal Bhutto said while addressing a public rally in Badin. The JIT report was false and forged and its purpose was nothing but political engineering, he said adding that the PPP had fought against oppression earlier as well and could do so in the future also. “I have been hearing about arrest of Zardari since I was one. We are common and ideological politicians and we do not fear prisons.” The PPP chairman said Zardari’s replies in the JIT report were deliberately censored. Zardari had replied the JIT in writing, he added. “Zardari’s defence is nowhere to be found in the JIT,” he said. Former president Zardari has turned down the allegations leveled against him in the report prepared by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the fake bank accounts case and has asked the Supreme Court to reject the ‘dubious’ report. In a 17-page document that he submitted in the Supreme Court on Saturday through his counsel, the co-chairman of the PPP said that he had not committed any wrongdoing, adding that the “allegations” in the JIT report were rooted in “victimisation against him”. Expressing his reservations, he said that the JIT had neither provided copies of the evidence nor the copies of the witnesses’ statements to the respondents. Bilawal said Asif Zardari was ready to counter corruption references today as well. Zardari was the only man who could take other parties forward with him, he maintained. Disdaining the media reports about grand alliance, he said no measures were being taken at the moment for forging grand opposition alliance. The scion of Bhutto dynasty alleged that all the state institutions including the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) were working under the government’s pressure. “The institutions should not be intimidated by the prime minister’s threats.” On an ongoing campaign for amendment in 18th Amendment, he said the PPP restored the Constitution in its original form through the 18th Amendment and there would be no compromise on it. Bilawal also suggested that the ones holding public service posts should remain apolitical. He said the PPP could play the role of the opposition all alone.