A banking court in Lahore granted post-arrest bail to Parvez Elahi, the President of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), on Tuesday in a money laundering case filed by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
The court accepted Elahi’s plea for post-arrest bail and instructed him to submit a surety bond worth Rs500,000.
During the hearing, the court noted that the FIA had failed to present the case records despite previous instructions.
In an earlier development, a special court in Lahore had granted post-arrest bail to the PTI leader in the same case after the investigative agency had detained him and requested physical remand.
However, the court had denied the FIA’s request for remand and instead ordered the former Punjab chief minister to be held in judicial remand for 14 days.
Although the court had accepted Elahi’s bail plea against a surety bond of Rs10,000 and issued an order for his release from District Camp Jail, there were speculations that he might be re-arrested as a substantial police presence was deployed outside the prison premises.
Elahi was initially arrested in June as part of a corruption case amid a crackdown on the PTI following the May 9 protests. Since then, he has been released and subsequently re-arrested multiple times in connection with various cases, including two money laundering cases.