August 02, 2007	Thursday	Rajab 17, 1428

ATTOCK, Aug 1: A judicial magistrate on Wednesday awarded two-day physical remand of a former District Headquarters (DHQ) hospital storekeeper who was charged with misappropriating Rs473,000, officials said.

The anti-corruption department on Tuesday arrested Syed Maroof Shah, for his alleged involvement in two cases of misappropriation of medicines and misconduct.

The department’s officials told Dawn that a case had been registered against Maroof Shah on December 8, 2006, on a complaint filed by the DHQ hospital authorities.

According to the complaint, the storekeeper presented a fake ‘no objection certificate’ of the district health officer regarding the clearance of medicine stock of DHQ hospital after his suspension in an embezzlement case in 2002.

Later, the case was sent to the special anti-corruption court Rawalpindi, which sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment and a imposed a fine of Rs0.5 million. He had also been sacked from service, sources added.

However, the accused filed an appeal through the Lahore High court, Rawalpindi bench, against his sentence requesting bail. He was granted bail and released from jail but his appeal is still pending in court.

According to the anti-corruption records, a former DHQ Hospital MS, Dr Sultan Mehmood, and Mr Shah, were removed from their posts in 2000, when the army monitoring team (AMT) unearthed these irregularities.

After investigation, the then in-charge of AMT Attock, Lt-Col Shezad Bhatti, had sent the case to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against both these officials for recovery of the embezzled amount. But the case was shifted from NAB to the anti-corruption department for re-investigation.

The anti-corruption department, registered separate FIRs against the concerned officials after which Mr Shah was arrested.

Later, in another surprise move, Dr Mehmood was re-appointed as the MS of the Attock DHQ Hospital, in Oct 2005, by the secretary of the Punjab health department, replacing Dr Fiaz Ahmed Khan.