KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) dismissed on Thursday the bail applications of 15 suspects including 12 officials of the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) in an illegal allotment reference.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had arrested 14 suspects after the dismissal of their pre-arrest bail and a trial court remanded them to prison while a suspect did not turn up before the SHC.

NAB had filed a reference against the KDA officials and private persons for their alleged involvement in illegal allotment of 23 amenity plots in Gulistan-i-Jauhar and converting them into 296 residential plots through china-cutting, a term used for illegal occupation and carving of the land into plots and their sale, and causing Rs1.5 billion loss to national exchequer.

The suspects through their lawyers had moved pre-arrest bail applications. After hearing arguments from both sides, a two-judge bench of the SHC, headed by Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M. Shaikh, rejected the bail applications.

NAB officials arrested the deputy district officers of KDA Irfan Khan Yusufzai, Mohammad Kamran Warsi, Atif Naqvi and Syed Rizwan Ahmed; superintendents Khuda Bux Soomro, Akhtar Rasheed, Mohammad Hanif Khan and Sarfaraz Ahmed; clerks Shaikh Fareed, Sagheer Ahmed, Jahanzaib Iqbal and Mohammad Jumman; builder/beneficiary Moha­mmad Feroze alias Bengali and private person/beneficiary Irfan Ahmed after dismissal of their bail applications.

The bail application of suspect Jahanzaib Jahangir was also dismissed, but he was not present in court when the order was read out.

Thereafter, NAB officials brought the detained suspects before the accountability court-II, where the reference is pending trial, and Judge Amina Nazir Ansari sent them to prison on judicial remand till Dec 23.

A suspect also moved an application seeking better facilities in prison and the court asked the Karachi University to verify his educational documents.

According to NAB, Yusufzai and Naqvi are the officials of shifting section of KDA and they allegedly prepared fake allotment letters of residential plots on amenity areas while the other officials are from recovery section of KDA and they allegedly made illegal transfer challans.

The private persons in collusion with KDA officials got the illegal allotments of plots and then sold them to public, it added.

There are a total of 28 suspects in the reference and Mohammad Shakir Langra, Mohammad Nasir, Fahimuddin Ahmed, Mushtaq and Syed Nasir Kazmi are already in prison while one suspect is on bail and eight are absconders.

Missing persons

Another division bench of SHC observed on Thursday that police were not lodging FIRs in the cases of missing persons and directed the provincial police officer to look into the matter.

While hearing dozens of petitions moved by the families of missing persons, the bench headed by Justice Niamatullah Phulphoto expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of police to recover the victims and said that the cases were also not being lodged.

Meanwhile, the bench also issued notices to respondents till Jan 25 on some identical petitions.

Impleading the Rangers’ director general, provincial police officer and others as respondents, the petitioners sought the whereabouts of their missing relatives and pleaded for their recovery.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2017