LAHORE, July 23: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday sought from the State Bank list of the people who got Rs0.5 trillion loans written off during 1992 to 2002.

Taking serious note of the non-compliance of the court orders, Justice Mian Saqib Nisar directed the government to depute an officer who could explain the position on Oct 8.

The orders were passed on a petition, seeking recovery of trillions of rupees loans which were written off by influential people.

Petitioner-lawyer M.D. Tahir had submitted that the defaulters of Rs10,000 only had been put behind the bars but no action had been taken against the influential people who ate up Rs10 trillion loans.

The court had on Sept 30, 2002, directed State Bank’s Assistant Director (Legal) Nisar Khan to submit a report within two weeks but he failed to do so.

On Wednesday, Nisar Khan submitted that the SBP received the court notice without the copy of the petition. The court directed advocate M.D. Tahir to provide a copy to the SBP authorities.

Advocate M.D. Tahir submitted that his previous petition for the recovery of Rs10 trillion written off loans during 1974 to 1991 was already pending with the court.

He said that an influential person of Gujrat got a loan of Rs37.987 million from the National Bank in 1999 to set up a sugar mills. Later, the influential person got the loan written off and many others followed him.—APP