hasn’t been long since Pakistan’s ex prime minister and the chief of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Group (PML-N), Nawaz Sharif, was acquitted of the plane-hijacking conspiracies against ex president Pervez Musharraf and now he is about to face an inquiry regarding his hand in the murder of an army officer. If the Supreme Court finds the inquiry results to point to Mr. Sharif’s involvement in the said crime, the PML-N leader will be facing a trial for murder.

The petition against Mr. Sharif has been filed by Shahid Orakzai, a freelance journalist, who has claimed that Mr. Sharif ordered the killing of his brother Major Shabir Orakzai who was gunned down by unidentified men in Kohat in 1997. The petition accuses Mr. Sharif of ordering the murder of Major Shabir after the latter exposed Mr Sharif’s involvement in bribing the parliamentarians from FATA for selecting a PML-N candidate as the Speaker of the Parliament, back in 1993. When a PPP candidate won the election, the PML-N chief refused to pay the money and the matter went to the court, which found that the deal had taken place. To save his face, Mr. Sharif had Major Shabir Orakzai assassinated.

PML-N’s spokesman Ahsan Iqbal, however, has denied the petition’s content as rubbish and a conspiracy of character assassination of the PML-N chief in which the presidency and hidden hands are involved. He said that Shahid Orakzai had connections with intelligence agencies and that PML-N would deal with any false charges without worrying much over them.