KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency arrested the director general of the Karachi Development Authority on Saturday for concealing his government job and falsifying facts to obtain a passport — a charge, if proved, could land him maximum three years in prison.

Officials said that Syed Nasir Abbas, a grade-20 officer, was arrested after a case was registered against him for obtaining a passport by declaring himself a businessman.

They said that an inquiry against Mr Abbas was initiated last year and despite the fact that the FIA came to know about the alleged crime it did not lodge an FIR against him due to “unknown reasons”.

The FIA says others who gave wrong information to obtain passports would be arrested soon

However, the said inquiry, the officials said, was formally turned into an FIR on Friday and he was arrested on Saturday from his residence.

“The issue first surfaced in March-April 2015,” said an official. “But the inquiry initiated by the FIA surprisingly never gathered pace and Mr Abbas continued to serve as the chief of one of the key Sindh government organisations. Only this week it was decided to turn the inquiry into a proper case.”

The official said that an FIR (320/2017) was lodged against the KDA chief with the FIA’s anti-human trafficking cell, formerly known as the Passport Circle, under Section 6 (1)(a)(c) of the Passport Act, 1974.

The section reads: “a person shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both, if he/she makes or makes use of any statement which he knows or believes to be false in any document for obtaining passport; or wilfully conceals any fact which under the circumstances he ought to disclose for the purpose of obtaining a passport for himself or another person.”

Apart from concealing facts for obtaining the passport, sources said that Mr Abbas had also acquired a National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP).

A source said that the KDA chief frequently visited the United States and Canada and his status and nature of such travelling needed to be investigated.

Recently posted FIA director Sindh Dr Ameer Sheikh told Dawn that the agency would investigate the motive for acquiring the documents by the senior government functionary.

“We will also investigate on our part how he had been granted the passport by submitting such wrong information,” he said, adding: “There are several similar cases which we are looking into. All pending inquiries on such lines will be properly turned into cases to make formal arrests.”

According to an FIR lodged against Mr Abbas, in March 2015 he acquired his new passport showing himself a businessman but after more than a year in December 2016 he applied for reprint of the same passport declaring him a government servant.

“Consequent upon inquiry No. 45/2017 dated of FIA AHT Circle Karachi, it transpired that accused Syed Nasir Abbas s/o Syed Alamdar Hussain, director general (BPS-20), Karachi Development Authority (KDA) being a government servant obtained a Pakistani passport by misdeclaration/concealment of facts i.e. by declaring his profession as business instead of government servant,” read the FIR.

The arrest of the KDA chief on concealment of personal facts has emerged when his organisation was already facing a couple of inquiries from the National Accountability Bureau which only on Friday raided its offices and seized the record on complaints of illegal allotments of land.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2017