PESHAWAR: A local accountability court on Saturday remanded an employee of the National Accountability Bureau Khyber Pakhtunkhwa into the bureau’s custody for seven days in a corruption case.

Judge Ibrahim Khan directed the relevant officials to produce the suspect, Gul Khitab, a NAB office assistant, on May 9.

The NAB arrested the suspect on Thursday on the charge of receiving bribe by impersonating as an assistant director (investigation) from a corruption suspect.

A NAB prosecutor told the court that the suspect had received Rs200,000 as bribe from a municipal officer in Abbottabad, Mahbub Ali Shah, who was currently in the bureau’s custody.

He said the suspect had assured the municipal officer that corruption charge against him would be dropped.

The prosecutor requested the judge to grant the physical custody of the suspect to NAB for interrogation. Lately, Mahbub Ali Shah told the NAB that he had already paid money to the suspect.

The municipal officer also recorded his statement before a judicial magistrate on April 27 claiming the suspect asked him to visit the NAB offices in connection with an ongoing inquiry against him.

Mahbub alleged that the suspect posed himself as an assistant director (investigation), Umair Butt, and told him that the inquiry against him would be closed if he paid him bribe. He alleged that the son-in-law of the suspect, Niaz Mohammad, accompanied by another person visited him in Abbottabad and received Rs210,000 bribe, including four Rs50,000 cheques and Rs10,000 cash.

Mahbub said he was surprised that after few days, he was arrested by the NAB and learned that the suspect was an office assistant and not assistant director at NAB.

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2015

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