Islamabad, May 26 : Deposed Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has said that officials who bowed before President Pervez Musharraf’s diktat last year, will be punished.

Addressing a convention of lawyers in Faisalabad, Justice Chaudhry promised that anyone who had violated the order “will be punished, no matter how big he is and whatever position he is attaining”.

He also said that the Supreme Court had passed an order aimed at countering the President’s actions on November 3, the same day that emergency was declared.

“The judges who had taken oath under Musharraf’s Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) had violated the Constitution and would be held accountable,” the Daily Times quoted Chaudhry as saying.

He said dictators were relics of the past who had abused the judiciary to legitimise their illegal decisions, but the judiciary and the civil society had now rejected the dictatorship.

Denying tallegations that the judiciary was interfering with the executive when he was the chief justice, he said, “It is not true. The judiciary was exercising its powers as enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan.” (ANI)