IN taking notice of Axact’s alleged fake degree scam, the Supreme Court chief justice will hopefully ensure that the stop-and-go pattern of the various interventions that the case has seen is not repeated. In the past, the then interior minister, too, had ordered a probe into the multiple acquittals that the case saw, but that inquiry was subsequently buried. In fact, the authorities here have repeatedly stumbled in trying to advance the case against the company, even though a senior employee pleaded guilty in a New York court to the charge of being involved in the alleged scam. Moreover, media outlets in Canada and now Britain have carried reports that people who obtained fake credentials from this company are currently working in sensitive jobs such as paediatric care. This failure, against all mounting evidence from abroad, is casting doubt on Pakistan’s own educational system. It is also resulting in the country being branded as a hotbed of fraud and criminal activity which appears to enjoy the protection of powerful quarters, despite the voluminous evidence the FIA says it has collected from the company’s own servers.

When conducting his inquiry, the chief justice may want to speak to the four judges who abruptly refused to continue hearing the case. He might also want to talk to the multiple special public prosecutors who quit the case all of a sudden, giving vague reasons for their decision. All this indicated some sort of pressure being applied on them. The chief justice may want to delve into the reported incident of the abduction and roughing up of an FIA investigator who was a key player in examining the contents of the Axact servers when they were seized by the agency. He might want to ask how much progress has been made in the investigation of a grenade attack on the house of one of the prosecutors, which was followed by acquittal verdicts in some of the cases filed against the company. He might want to study the case documents of the New York court where Umair Hamid said he was a senior vice president of the company before pleading guilty. In short, the chief justice has no shortage of material to refer to in order to understand the reality of the case. The matter must be urgently addressed if Pakistan wants to avoid further humiliation on the international stage.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2018