KARACHI, March 22: Former chief minister Syed Abdullah Shah was on Thursday granted interim bail in 17 accountability cases involving conversion of poultry farms into residential plots.

An emaciated Abdullah Shah came to the high court in a wheelchair and surrendered himself. He was looking so weak that a division bench comprising Justices Mohammad Afzal Soomro and Rahmat Husain Jafferi found it difficult to recognise him.

His counsel, Ismat Mehdi, submitted that he also held the portfolio of finance minister when he sanctioned conversion and was, therefore, competent to do so. The Ehtesab Bureau filed references against him in 1997 when he already had left the country and could not be punished as an absconder. The references were later prosecuted by the National Accountability Bureau. The former CM, the lawyer said, had returned home in disregard of his doctors’ advice.

The counsel cited cases of Mukhtar Ahmad Awan, Jam Sadiq Ali and Habibullah Kundi to assert that the act of absconding was to be viewed in the circumstance of each case. His co-accused in the references had been granted bail and the rule of consistency required that he should also be given the concession. He was suffering from pancreatic cancer, though he would seek bail on merit, the counsel said.

Issuing notices to the NAB for April 4, the bench admitted him to bail in the sum of Rs500,000 in each of the 17 cases along with personal bonds in the like amount.

The former chief minister is also an accused in criminal cases, including murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto in September 1996.