Former Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif’s bail plea on health grounds rejected

Pakistan's Islamabad High Court has rejected the bail plea on medical grounds of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who is currently serving a seven-year jail term in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case. The Islamabad High Court said in its decision in the capital on Monday that Sharif could not be given bail on health grounds as he was already being treated at a hospital. "We're surely disappointed by this decision," Sharif's aide, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, told reporters, adding that a government medical board had called for urgent treatment. But he said his party would respect the court decision. "We have always respected court decisions," he said. "We will take all necessary legal recourse."

According to a Punjab government official, the three-time prime minister asked the doctors to shift him back to jail after his bail was rejected.

"The doctors advised angiography of Sharif but he refused to have the procedure in the Jinnah Hospital," the official told news agency PTI.

"We have shifted Sharif to jail primarily on his request," he said and added that the Sharif family was interested to get his angiography done from London after bail.

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The home department spokesman also confirmed that Sharif was sent back to jail on his "wish".

The five-member special medical board of the Jinnah Hospital that examined Sharif said the patient needs cardiac catheterisation, for further management, in view of his symptoms of angina.

Shahbaz Sharif, younger brother of Nawaz Sharif said: "We are consulting our lawyers to challenge the high court verdict to reject his bail in the Supreme Court."

Sharif remains barred from running for public office for life after the Supreme Court in April ruled he had lied on a parliamentary wealth declaration and the disqualification from that crime would last for an indefinite period.  

The three-time former prime minister was dismissed from office in July 2017 over corruption allegations, with the country's top court ordering the anti-corruption watchdog to launch proceedings against him and his family.

Sharif and his children - two sons and a daughter - were charged with three counts of corruption during his two stints in power in the 1990s.