LAHORE  -  The Lahore High Court has been moved against the Punjab govern­ment’s decision to approve funds amounting to more than Rs360 mil­lion for providing interest-free loans to 11 judges. The petition filed by citi­zen Mashkoor Hussain challenges the Punjab government’s decision to ap­prove interest-free loans amounting to over Rs360 million for 11 judges of the Lahore High Court.

The petition makes the Punjab government, chief secretary, S&GAD secretary, and finance secretary re­spondents in the case. The Punjab gov­ernment gave loans to the judges of the Lahore High Court equal to their three years of basic salaries, which is an av­erage of Rs 30 million per judge.

The caretaker cabinet’s standing committee on finance approved inter­est-free loans to judges. Agenda Nos. 17, 18, and 19 of the Standing Com­mittee on Finance of the Cabinet con­tain references to giving money to 11 judges. The basic salary of these judg­es is more than Rs900,000 per month.

Meanwhile, an anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Friday handed over eight accused, involved in the Askari Tower attack case, to police on 6-day physical remand. Earlier, the police produced the accused, Irfan Ahmad, Yar Gul, Raja Samiullah, Muhammad Ahmad, Altaf Hussain, Tayyab Ansari, Muhammad Umar and Mirza Arslan Baig, before ATC Judge Abher Gul Khan on completion of their identifi­cation process. The investigation of­ficer submitted that the accused were involved in the case but they had gone into hiding to avoid arrest. He submit­ted that after arrest, the accused were sent to jail for identification, wherein they had been identified.