ISLAMABAD   -  A special court established under the Official Secrets Act on Monday indicted former prime minister Imran Khan and ex-foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in the cipher case.

The cipher case pertains to a diplomatic document that reportedly went missing from Imran’s possession. The PTI alleges that the document contained a threat from the United States to oust Imran from office.

The PTI chief was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in the Toshakhana graft case on August 5.

The IHC had suspended his sentence on August 29 but he remained in jail because he was on judicial remand in the cipher case. On September 30, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had submitted a challan — a charge sheet — in the special court naming Qureshi as the principal accused in the cipher case.

The court had decided that the two PTI leaders would be indicted in the case on October 17. However, last week the court had put off the indictment till Monday’s hearing. Yesterday, Special Court Judge Abul Hasnaat Zulqarnain conducted the hearing at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail. The court formally commenced the trial in the case and summoned the witnesses at the next hearing on Oct 27. 

The charge sheet read out by Judge Hasnaat stated that Imran “illegally retained and wrongly communicated” the cipher. “The said information/cipher was relating to top secret information which were inter-se two states i.e., United States and Pakistan,” it said. According to the charge sheet, the PTI chief, while holding the office of the prime minister, used the cipher in a “prohibited place (jalsa)” and “willfully communicated” the secret information to unauthorised persons, which was against the “interest of the State of Pakistan”. “The cipher was entrusted to you in confidence by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [but] you used the document while keeping it in your possession for the benefit of your personal political designs and compromised the cipher and the security system of Pakistan,” it reads. The charge sheet further stated that Imran conspired to “misuse the contents of the cipher” at a meeting in his Bani Gala residence on March 28, 2022. It added that Imran kept the cipher in his possession and never returned it to the foreign ministry. The charge sheet added that Qureshi “aided and abetted” Imran and therefore was liable for the act in the same manner.