PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Tuesday set aside the conviction of two people, including a former deputy superintendent of police, by an accountability court in an illegal assets case.

Justice Roohul Amin Khan Chamkani and Justice Mohammad Ghazanfar Khan accepted the appeals of former DSP Rajab Ali and another convict, Lateef Hussain, and pronounced that the evidence on record didn’t establish that the assets possessed by the DSP were disproportionate to the known sources of his income.

An accountability court had convicted both Rajab Ali and Lateef Hussain on Feb 8, 2016. Appellant Rajab Ali was sentenced to the seven years rigorous imprisonment with a fine for Rs14.68 million for possessing illegal assets.

He was also sentenced on another count to the five years imprisonment for producing a forged document of the sale of certain properties to Lateef.

Also, Lateef was sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs14.08 million in the main case, whereas he was sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment in the case of producing forged documents.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, had arrested the prime accused, Rajab Ali, on Apr 18, 2014, when he worked as a DSP in Mardan district.

The bench had reserved its judgment few days ago and pronounced it on Tuesday.

Lawyers Mudassir Amir and Arshad Ali appeared for appellants Rajab Ali and Lateef Hussain, respectively.

Barrister Mudassir contended that his client was implicated in a fabricated case. He contended that the prime charge against him was construction of a house at Taxila over which the NAB had alleged that over Rs10 million were spent, which was not in accordance with the known sources of his income.

He said the appellant lived in joint family and two of his brothers served in Saudi Arabia.

The lawyer said the appellant belonged to a highly regarded family of Parachinar area in Kurram Agency, where his family had vast pieces of land and orchards.

He added that the trial court had erred while not accepting the fact that five brothers, including the appellant, had jointly constructed a house in Taxila.

The lawyer said there were signatures of seven persons on a stamp paper regarding the sale of certain properties to Lateef Hussain in Kurram Agency.

He said six of the signatories had clearly stated that the document in question was genuine and not forged one, and that only tehsildar had claimed that he was not sure about the authenticity of the document.

The lawyer added that the document was genuine.

Separate inquiries were conducted by the NAB and police against the suspect after the Peshawar High Court took notice of his alleged illegal activities and misuse of powers in 2012. The court had taken notice of his activities after some cases of the suspects’ illegal detention surfaced.

The NAB alleged that both appellants were shareholders in the purchase of land valuing millions of rupees in Taxila.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2017