A Pakistani court has rejected a petition seeking the disqualification of former prime minister Imran Khan for concealing his alleged daughter Tyrian White while submitting his nomination papers for the 2018 general elections.
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) took up the petition on May 21 after a gap of almost a year, the Dawn newspaper reported.
The petition alleged that the 71-year-old Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party founder had not disclosed his alleged daughter — Tyrian White — in his nomination papers for contesting the 2018 general elections.
Mr. Khan’s PTI party won the 2018 general elections, and the former cricketer-turned-politician served as the prime minister of Pakistan from August 2018 to April 2022.
The IHC rejected the petition after noting that a three-judge bench had previously dismissed it, the report said.
Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri read the opinion of the two judges given last year and ruled that the case has already been dismissed.
On May 10, 2023, a three-member bench of the court hearing the case was dissolved by IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq after the opinion of two of the three judges — supporting the petition’s dismissal — was uploaded on the court’s website.
The majority judgement was deleted from the website minutes after it was uploaded, and the IHC chief justice dissolved the bench.
Mr. Khan’s party welcomed the judgement, saying that the two judges had already decided the case, but the IHC chief justice “tried to keep it alive on technicalities”.
Senior lawyers questioned the constitution of a fresh bench when the case had been decided earlier, according to the report.
The petition said that even though Khan had three children, he had mentioned only two in the papers and concealed the existence of his third child.
It also alleged that Khan did not marry his alleged girlfriend Sita White, mother of Tyrian, because her father told Khan that he would not get a “penny” from his wealth if he married Sita.
The PTI founder initially joined the proceedings but later backtracked after he was asked to undergo a blood test, it added.
