Islamabad: An accountability court in Pakistan today rejected ousted premier Nawaz Sharif's objections to the supplementary case filed against him and his family by the country's anti-graft body over properties in London.

 

The court holding trial in graft cases against Sharif and his family decided that the supplementary case would be made part of the record in the Avenfield flats case.

 

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on January 22 filed a supplementary case with the accountability court's registrar in Islamabad which is already trying Sharif and his family -- two sons Hussain and Hassan, daughter Maryam, and son-in-law Safdar -- for alleged corruption in three cases.

 

The cases are related to the Panama Papers scandal that had forced the 68-year-old three-time prime minister to resign.

 

Accompanied by daughter Maryam and son-in-law Mohammad Safdar, Sharif for the 15th time appeared in the court located in Islamabad.

 

During the hearing today, conducted by Judge Muhammad Bashir, Nawaz Sharif s lawyer Khawaja Haris had raised an objection over the supplementary reference, saying there is nothing new in it.

 

"The reference has been filed in line with the JIT report and no Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) report has so far been filed, said Haris.

 

According to him, the NAB had said that a supplementary reference would be filed when new evidence is found against the suspects but that is not the case. The supplementary reference had to be filed in reply to a legal consultation. 

 

Haris stressed that the supplementary reference was not as per the order of the top court and thus could not be accepted.

 

"The supplementary reference was filed to target Sharif and even in that reference, the same allegations already levelled in the interim reference were repeated," he said.

 

The three cases against the Sharif family pertain to the Al-Azizia Steel Mills, several companies including Flagship Investment Ltd, and London's Avenfield properties.

 

Sharif and his sons have been named in all three NAB cases, while Maryam and Safdar have been named only in the Avenfield case.

 

The political future of Sharif, who heads the country's most powerful political family and the ruling PML-N party, has been hanging in the balance since his ouster. If convicted, he could be jailed.

 

Sharif's family alleges that the cases are politically motivated.

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New Delhi, Nov 23: Cancer patients should not delay or stop their treatment by following unproven remedies, oncologists at Tata Memorial Hospital said after former India cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu claimed at a presser that his wife Navjot Kaur defeated stage 4 cancer with dietary and lifestyle changes.

In a statement posted on X, the Director of Tata Memorial Hospital, Dr C S Pramesh, said, "Parts of the video imply that starving the cancer by not eating dairy products and sugar, consuming haldi (turmeric) and neem helped cure her 'incurable' cancer."

These comments have no high quality evidence to support them, the statement signed by 262 oncologists from the Tata Memorial Hospital, both past and present, said.

While research is going on for some of these products, currently there is no clinical data to recommend their use as anti-cancer agents, it added.

"We urge the public to not delay their treatment by following unproven remedies, but rather to consult a doctor, preferably a cancer specialist, if they have any symptoms of cancer. Cancer is curable if detected early and proven treatments for cancer include surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy," read the statement issued in "public interest".

Posting a clip of from Sidhu's press conference on X, Dr Pramesh said, "Please don't believe and get fooled by these statements regardless of who it comes from. These are unscientific and baseless recommendations. She got surgery and chemotherapy that were evidence based which is what made her cancer-free. Not the haldi, neem etc."