PESHAWAR, Oct 8: An accountability court on Wednesday convicted a senior official, Ahmad Nawaz Shinwari, of corruption and sentenced him to three-year rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs575,000.

The court, presided over by Saleem Khan, observed that the prosecution had proved Mr Shinwari guilty of accumulating assets disproportionate to his known sources of income, which was an offence under Section 9 of the National Accountability Bureau Ordinance, 1999.

The NAB had charged Mr Shinwari of possessing assets worth Rs56.919 million but the prosecution could prove the ownership of assets worth Rs575,000. The prosecution conceded that some of the assets had been acquired before Mr Shinwari’s induction into civil service.

The prosecution had also cited a dead person, Ghulam Sabir, in the list of witnesses and his statement under Section 161 of the Criminal Procedure Code was placed on record. It abandoned the witness when it came to know  that he had died before the claimed recording of the statement.

In the final stages of the trial the accountability court accepted  two applications of the NAB, whereby the prosecution was allowed to place  on record certain documents which had not been produced earlier.

Barrister Zahoorul Haq appeared for the defendant and stated that he  had pointed out lacunas in the prosecution’s case during his final argument on July 12, following which the prosecution had filed the applications on July 16.

He argued that the applications could not be entertained after the completion of the arguments.