KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Thursday directed the National Accountability Bureau to place before it details of a plea bargain deal it had struck in 2001 with Pakistan Peoples Party lawmaker Sharmila Farooqui in a corruption reference.

A two-judge bench issued the directive during the hearing of a petition filed by the PPP MPA against NAB for writing to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and the Sindh Assembly, asking them to disqualify her for having been convicted by a court.

The hearing was put off to a date to be later pronounced by the court office.

Meanwhile, the bench extended its interim order restraining the ECP, NAB and others from taking any adverse action against Sharmila Farooqui in the case.

The court directed NAB’s special prosecutor and the petitioner’s counsel to forward their arguments at the next hearing on Nov 23.

Ms Farooqui’s counsel filed a rejoinder contending that under Sections 9 and 17 of the Ehtesab Act, a person holding public office could not be disqualified after he/she entered into plea bargain.

“Under no circumstances, Section 15 of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999, which provided that a person stands disqualified from holding public office for 21 years after having been convicted by a court, cannot be applied in my client’s case,” he argued.

In his reply, the NAB prosecutor argued that Ms Farooqui could not hold any public office because she had been convicted by an accountability court. He said Ms Farooqui, her mother Anisa Farooqui and father Usman Farooqui stood disqualified from holding public office for 21 years as per the accountability court’s judgement issued on April 28, 2001, under Section 15 of the NAO.

In her petition, Sharmila Farooqui said NAB had filed a reference against her father, who was a former chairman of Steel Mills, mother and her for investing a huge amount in national savings schemes which did not commensurate with their known sources of income.

However, they later entered into plea bargain with NAB which was allowed by the relevant court in 2001. She said NAB had in 2016 written to the ECP, the State Bank of Pakistan and others, asking for her disqualification under Section 15 of the NAO.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2017