The judge asked him to submit surety bonds worth Rs20,000 and remarked that a senior politician should not have made such a statement against a government official.

Fawad Chaudhry’s counsel Babar Awan argued in court that Secretary Election Commission was an individual and was synonymous with the state just as the Election Commission could not be considered to be government.

He also argued that the case against Chaudhry had included clauses that could land him in prison for 10 to 15 years.

The prosecutor opposed the bail on the ground that the PTI leader had misused his freedom of speech. When the judge asked why the prosecution considered the word munshi, used by Fawad Chaudhry for the ECP official to be derogatory, the prosecutor said it had been used to ‘target’ the official.

The ECP’s lawyer said that Fawad had to be subjected to a photogrammatic test because he could disown his statement later on in the trial. He also said that political leaders should not try to provoke agitation in the public.