PESHAWAR, May 24: The Peshawar High Court on Friday turned down pre-arrest bail plea of Dr Mohammad Ali Chauhan in the multi-million rupees scam involving purchase of substandard hepatitis-C injections and vaccines, following which he was arrested.

A single bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan also dismissed bail petitions of already arrested three officials of health department – director general Dr Sharif Ahmad Khan, chief of Provincial Hepatitis Control Programme Dr Ghulam Subhani and a storekeeper Mubarak Shah.

The bench observed that these officials did not deserve to be given the concession of bail.

Dr Chauhan, a former director general of health services and presently working as chief executive of Maulvi Jee Hospital Peshawar, was soon taken into custody by the officials of Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) and handcuffed.

The ACE had registered the case under Sections 409, 419, 420, 468, 471, 120-B, 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The chief justice had taken suo motu notice of the issue in February and issued directives to ACE director Fayyaz Ali Shah to conduct an inquiry in this regard. The court had observed that they had reports that despite having information that the said injection was substandard the accused persons went ahead with its purchase in bulk.

The lawyers appearing for the four accused contended that the ACE was not competent to deal with this case and it should be registered under the Drug Act. The lawyers stated about their respective clients that they had no concern with the purchase of the vaccine as they were not member of the purchase committee at the relevant time.

The counsels contradicted the allegations of ACE that a large number of vaccines were not accounted for. They argued that the vials were in fact not missing and were stored with the concerned company, Pharmedics Laboratories at Lahore as the health department did not have proper storage capacity here.

Additional advocate general Ms Neelum Khan argued that the case fell in the domain of ACE as misappropriation of Rs260 million was involved.

She argued that the four suspects were involved in the case as they were members of the purchase committee. She stated that the purchase and disappearance of thousands of vaccines from government stores occurred from 2009 to 2013 and during that time the said officials remained on different posts.

Ms Neelum contended that in 2012 Mr Subhani as project director had issued a certificate concerning completion of the entire supply of the vaccines to the government.