PTI Chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan has written a letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan and other Supreme Court judges seeking early hearing of a constitutional petition regarding leaked audio tapes, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Monday.

In his letter which was shared on PTI’s official Twitter handle, the former prime minister urged the Supreme Court judges to enforce Article 14 of the Constitution which assures the fundamental rights of the people of Pakistan in the matter of unverified audio leaks. He lamented that “constitutional guarantees afforded to the people of Pakistan are being violated with impunity” and referred to the case of Senator Azam Swati who “suffered from the worst kind of invasion of privacy possible”.

He highlighted that the unverified audio clips leaked on social media, purporting to carry alleged conversations between various public officials/ex-public officials, have “appeared to be either deep fakes or fabricated, edited, trimmed, and joined, pieced together, and cannibalised to present an inaccurate and incorrect portrayal of the alleged conversations that they purport to carry”.

https://twitter.com/PTIofficial/status/1627568504860811265

Amid this backdrop, the PTI Chairman appealed to the top court to fix his petition on the matter of the audio leaks for hearing at the earliest possible opportunity. 

The letter to the Supreme Court comes amid the latest series of audio leaks where PTI leader Dr Yasmin Rashid was the recent target. Alleged audio of PTI leader Dr. Yasmin Rashid and Lahore Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Ghulam Mahmood Dogar surfaced on social media on Saturday.

Earlier, former Punjab Chief Minister Parvez Elahi came in the spotlight after three au­dio-clips allegedly fea­turing him went viral on social media on Thurs­day in which he could be heard telling his ‘lawyer’ to get a certain judge for hearing the case of his close aide, Muhammad Khan Bhatti.

Similarly, audio clips of PTI Chairman Imran Khan, PML-N Senior Vice President Maryam Nawaz, former Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif among others have also gone viral.

The frequent audio leaks have raised concern for Pakistan’s cyber security. Interestingly, most of the audios were leaked from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Reporter Kifayat Ali Shah