Islamabad: Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Wednesday wrote to interior ministry to include names of former Premier Nawaz Sharif in the Exit Control List (ECL).

The Bureau also asked the ministry to impose travel ban on Mr Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Mohammed Safdar saying “it is possible that the accused attempt to flee the country.”

Mr Sharif and his family members are being tried in accountability court for alleged corruption.

Reacting to NAB’s plea, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) senator Pervez Rashid said that the bureau should not target those who are facing trials and that the Sharif family holds itself answerable before the courts.

Mr Sharif among the three accused are attending hearings of courts with consistency. There have been times during the trials when the family members appeared before courts twice in a day, he added.

The senator said that the family members had flown out of Pakistan and returned for court hearings multiple times since the trials began. The former information minister said that the ruling PML-N brought back politicians who deemed of themselves above courts’ orders and allegedly escaped accountability. The lawmaker branded NAB’s request to the ministry an effort to influence accountability court’s verdict.

Wife of the ousted Premier Kulsoom Nawaz is undergoing medical treatment for lymph nodes cancer in a London hospital since September 2017 and has not returned
since then.