LAHORE, April 16: An accountability court acquitted on Wednesday former MNA Chaudhry Abdul Hameed of corruption charges filed against him in a NAB reference.

While acquitting Mr Hameed, who was also Sargodha’s mayor, of abusing his official position, the court observed that the NAB could not substantiate any of the three charges levelled against him in the reference. Had it substantiate any of the charges, the court would not have let him go.

The court, giving a judgment, specifically mentioned the discrepancy pointed out by Defence Counsel Manzoor Ahmad Malik regarding the number of documents contained in the official files produced by the prosecution on the alleged illegal allotment of octroi contracts. The counsel had pointed out during the trial that the actual number of documents contained in each of those files was much lesser than those mentioned in the respective indices of each file.

The court observed that Sargodha municipal corporation former chief officer Mirza Yaseen, who submitted these documents against the accused, had conceded during his cross-examination that the documents missing out of these official files could have been removed by any of the corporation’s official to prejudice the case.

The court applied the legal presumption under Article 129 (g) of Qanoon-i-Shahadat that since the prosecution could not produce those missing documents on the judicial record, those documents would have benefited the accused (if submitted), and gave him benefit of the doubt.

The NAB alleged that Mr Hameed allotted more than 100 shops at the Sargodha’s municipal market to his acquaintances through sham auction, causing a loss of Rs10.50 million to the national exchequer.

He also allegedly awarded octroi contracts to some people against monetary advantage in violation of the rules, and caused another Rs10 million loss to the exchequer. Abusing his official position, the accused did not recover the octroi amounts from the contractors, the NAB alleged, adding that the kitty bore a loss of Rs5.3 million in this transaction.

The accused claimed that his successors in 1991 and 1995 awarded octroi contracts at the rates much lower than those at which he had awarded contracts during his mayorship. He argued that the prosecution did not produce any incriminating evidence against him regarding the charges.

Mr Hameed was arrested by the NAB authorities on June 13, 2000. He is still facing two other corruption references in the trial courts in which he has already been granted bail.