Three people who were handed over to the FIA for a two-day physical remand for leaking former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa retired’s tax data on Thursday were not presented in court on Saturday.

An Islamabad court had remanded the three suspects, who were required to be presented in the district and sessions court of Judicial Magistrate Abdul Majid Qazi between 8:30am and 3:30pm.

The three suspects, Shahzad Niaz, Arshad Ali Qureshi and Mohammad Adeel Ashraf were presented before Judicial Magistrate Omer Shabbir on Thursday. The prosecution told the court that all three suspects had deleted the tax data they acquired illegally.

They told the court that Qureshi discarded his mobile phone on Nov 23, days after the leak of tax data of government functionaries on FactFocus, a website.

The prosecution told the court that Shahzad Niaz had been facilitating Ahmed Noorani, a Pakistani investigative reporter now based in the US, since 2018. He provided the reporter with taxpayers’ records in return for money.

A US-based website, Fact Focus, claimed that army chief General Bajwa’s assets have increased to 12.7 billion in the last six years.

The website said that these assets belonged not only to General Bajwa but to his wife, children, daughter-in-law, and son’s father-in-law Sabir Hameed.

After the publication of this news, Fact Focus also claimed that its website was rendered inaccessible in Pakistan, while many users said that the website was still accessible.

The federal government had ordered an investigation on Nov 21 into the leak of legally protected tax information of Gen Bajwa’s family.

Meanwhile, the military’s media wing refuted the claims made against Gen Bajwa retired in the report.