“If you target Nawaz Sharif’s daughter just because she’s the daughter of the prime minister, she’ll fight back,” Maryam told reporters outside the Federal Judicial Academy in Islamabad, following her appearance before the high-powered joint investigation team (JIT).
“If someone says I will make them [ruling family] cry, they should know only God can make someone subdue and no one except Him has the power to do it,” she said, adding the Sharif family had undergone the accountability processes several times in the past and have faced the current inquiry panel.
Maryam said Panama Papers was not the only scandal she was implicated in by the family’s rivals. “There was a Dawn leaks before this,” she said, claiming the opponents only wanted to pressurise ‘my father’ by implicating his daughter in such cases.
She went on to claim that her family chose to face accountability unlike others who shunned it on the pretext of back pain and those who took a refuge in public rest houses in an apparent reference to former military dictator General (retd) Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan, the petitioner in the Panamagate case against the ruling family.
Earlier, a large number of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) activists converged outside the judicial complex and chanted slogans in solidarity premier’s daughter.
The investigative body, headed by FIA Additional Director General Wajid Zia, is due to present its report before the apex court on July 10. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his sons Hussain Nawaz and Hassan Nawaz, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, PM’s son-in-law Captain (retd) Safdar and his cousin Tariq Shafi have also recorded their statement before the JIT.
National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry is also due to appear before the inquiry panel later in the day.