Islamabad, Nov 24(Agency) Pakistan’s Information Minister Shibli Faraz said on Tuesday that there were no restriction on former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his sons and former finance minister Ishaq Dar to come to Pakistan to attend the funeral of the PML-N supremo’s mother. Nawaz and Shehbaz Sharif’s mother, Begum Shamim Akhtar, passed away in London on November 22. She was in her 90s and had been unwell for a month or so, Dawn reports.
She had travelled to the United Kingdom in February to see her ailing son, Nawaz, who is getting treatment for heart and kidney ailments there. Arrangements are being made to bring her dead body back to Lahore within a couple of days to be buried next to the grave of her husband, Mian Sharif, at the family’s Jati Umra estate. On Monday, the PML-N had sought at least a two-week parole for party president Shehbaz Sharif, brother of Nawaz Sharif and his son Hamza so as to be able to participate in the last rites of Begum Akhtar. Both Shehbaz and Hamza are currently lodged in Kot Lakhpat jail on judicial remand in a money laundering and assets beyond means case. Both Nawaz and Shehbaz could not attend the last rites of their father back in October 2004 as they were in exile in Jeddah and had rejected a conditional offer by then military dictator Pervez Musharraf in this respect. However, Nawaz’s daughter, PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz, has urged her father to stay back until his treatment is completed.