A special court in Islamabad rejected bail applications filed by Imran Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi in the cipher case on Thursday.

Judge Abu Alhasnaat Zulqurnain announced the reserved the judgement after hearing arguments from both sides in Thursday’s hearing.

Asad Umar was granted bail in the same case earlier in the day.

The case, registered under the Official Secrets Act, accuses former Prime Minister Khan and former Foreign Minister Qureshi of disclosing the contents of the a diplomatic cipher sent by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington.

Waving a piece of paper in a public rally, Imran had alleged the cipher contained proof of a conspiracy to oust him from power, weeks before his government ended through a no-confidence vote.

The hearing

The judge questioned why the copy of the cipher had gone missing when it was a classified document. He also remarked that the copies of the cipher in possession of the army chief, the DG ISI and foreign minsitry were all different from each other.

Khan’s lawyer Shoaib Shaheen argued that safeguarding documents was not the job of a prime minister but of his principal secretary. He added that the Azam Khan, who was principal secretary at the time, had neither been nominated in the case or questioned.

Salman Safdar also argued that the minsitry of interior had ‘hijacked’ the case when the actual recipient of the cipher was the foreign ministry.

However, when the time came for arguments from the opposing side, the prosecutor asked the judge to turn all irrelevant people out of the courtroom or ask them to take oath.

The judge then turned out everyone from the courtroom including members of the media. The judgement was reserved after the prosecution completed its arguments.