Judge Bashir will long be remembered as the man who set new standards of invulnerable integrity, legal expertise and moral uprightness in the Evenfield Apartments case which culminated in the conviction of Pakistan’s ex-Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif and his heiress Maryam Safdar.
Keeping in view the past record of the country in the cases involving high-profile personalities stinking with wealth and exuding unmistakable aura of power, it was widely speculated that despite all the sound and fury that characterized the long period of prosecution, the accused would manage to get bailed out of the loose noose of the Law.
Mian Nawaz Sharif is known not only for his monumental wealth, but also his readiness, ability and practice to buy out people, judgments, justice and consciences.
Justice (Retd) Qayyum’s notorious clip of his conversation with Mian Shahbaz Sharif is often remembered in this context. I personally can testify to a dialogue Mian Nawaz Sharif had with me in 1984, in which he had said: I SIMPLY DON’T TRUST ANY ONE WHOM I HAVE NOT BOUGHT OUT.
In the years of POWER, Mian Sahib discovered that BUYING OUT people was not the only effective course—they could also be threatened into a state in which they wouldn’t dare be themselves. Nihal Hashmi’s Mafia-style vided is a classic example in this respect.
To resist all the temptations that could have come his way, and all the threats that might have surfaced during the trial, was no mean achievement on the part of this valiant son of the soil of Pakistan.
YES JUDGE BASHIR, WE ARE AS PROUD OF YOU AS WE ARE PROUD OF THE SENSE OF SUBLIMATED SELF-RESPECT THAT OUR HIGH JUDICIARY HAS DISCOVERED AND COME TO BE IDENTIFIED WITH AND KNOWN FOR.
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