Nawaz Sharif in the plea prayed to the court to exclude Zia's statements recorded on August 30. He also requested the court to allow Nawaz's legal team to cross-examine Wajid Zia again.
On the previous hearing before Accountability Court, Khawaja Haris, the lead lawyer for Nawaz Sharif, accused the accountability judge of tampering with the record in Al-Azizia and Hill Metals Establishment reference, as the court gave directions to the authorities concerned to submit relevant parts of the Panama Papers JIT report's Volume 10.
During Wajid Zia's cross-examination, Haris alleged that Accountability Court-II Judge Arshad Malik altered the statement of the prosecution's star witness on the insistence of NAB prosecutor. This, he added, was done during the witness's cross-examination without providing him with an opportunity to contest the prosecutor's assertion.
He said that the judge should have listened to NAB's objection, taken his answer, written a new sentence instead of changing the previous one but the judge simply changed the sentence on the NAB prosecutor's objection. Later, he left the courtroom, saying that the court made the change without listening to him.
"The court changed the already recorded answer given by the witness in cross-examination by deleting the words "it is incorrect to suggest" and adding another sentence as part of this witness's statement in form of a suggestion," four associates of Haris stated in an application seeking adjournment to enable the defense team to avail remedy against the change.