ISLAMABAD - The Islamabad High Court Tuesday extended interim pre-arrest bail to Nasir Janjua, who was nominated as an accused by the former accountability judge Mohammad Arshad Malik in the video leak case.

A single bench of IHC comprising Acting Chief Justice Aamer Farooq conducted hearing of the case and barred the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) from arresting Nasir Janjua by extending his interim pre-arrest bail for one day.

During the hearing, Janjua’s counsel Qamar Afzal in his arguments said that his client has the bail for today and he cannot be arrested in this regard. He said that the FIA team is waiting outside the court to arrest his client but his client has bail till 12 midnight.

Later, the court extended his bail for a day and directed the FIA not to arrest him.

Last week, Janjua had filed a petition in the IHC seeking pre-arrest bail in case of blackmailing the accountability court judge and the court had granted the pre-arrest bail to him against the surety bonds worth of Rs200,000 till July 30.

Nasir Janjua, in his pre-arrest bail petition, stated that all the allegations against him regarding the video-gate scandal are baseless. The petition stated that Nasir Janjua has nothing to do with preparation of video, participation in video exhibition or displaying of video. Petitioner is innocent and ready to join the investigation whenever required.

Judge Arshad Malik, in the First Information Report (FIR) registered under various sections of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) with Cyber Crime Reporting Centre of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), claimed that his old acquaintance Mian Tariq secretly made his allegedly “immoral video” while he was serving as additional district and sessions judge of Multan and sold it to some people belonging to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

He further alleged that “a group of people including Nasir Janjua, Nasir Butt, Khurram Yousuf and Mehr Ghulam Jilani started to put pressure on me to help Mian Nawaz Sharif, who was earlier convicted by me in a NAB reference”.

Judge Malik had convicted Nawaz Sharif in the Al Azizia reference and sentenced him to seven-year imprisonment on December 24 last year.

According to the judge: “due to fear of exposure of the Multani video” he met Nawaz Sharif in Jati Umra on April 6 this year and Hussain Nawaz in Saudi Arabia on June 1. “Nasir Butt pressurised me to get his assistance in preparation of the grounds for appeals in Al Azizia and Flagship references.”

In the petition, Nasir Janjua stated that primarily there were three allegations which bring the case within the ambit of PECA: (i) securing video of some person, (ii) releasing the said video through any mode i.e. social media or otherwise in public, (iii) utilization of the said conversation /video/recording etc in any manner derogatory to the provision of law on the subject.

His petition claimed: “all the above allegations are not attracted or not even levelled to the extent of petitioner”.