ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani court on Monday dismissed a petition to put the name of the country's former prime minister Imran Khan and his cabinet members on a no-fly list while imposing a financial penalty of Rs100,000 ($416) on the petitioner.
The request was rejected by the top Islamabad High Court judge who reprimanded the petitioner for "politicizing the issue."
"IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah issued a five-page long reserved verdict against the plea, while slapping a Rs100,000 fine on the petitioner," Geo News reported. "The court had reserved its verdict on [the] plea earlier in the day."
When the chief justice asked the petitioner why he had brought the request to the court, he said he had also filed a treason case against Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
"Imran Khan was an elected prime minister," the IHC chief justice said. "Don't compare him to Musharraf."
The petitioner had also urged the court to investigate an allegedly "threatening letter" which the former prime minister said contained evidence of a foreign conspiracy to bring down his administration.
Later, the document turned out to be a diplomatic cable written by Pakistan's ambassador to the United States after his meeting with the assistant secretary of state Donald Lu.
Khan and his close aides maintained the communique showed that the no-confidence motion was part of an elaborate foreign conspiracy.
The petitioner said he wanted the court to probe the issue since it had led to a deterioration of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and the United States.
