BAHAWALPUR: The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) on Saturday arrested two bank officials for their alleged involvement in around Rs100 million fraud in salaries of Civil Hospital staff, including doctors.

The ACE team claimed to have taken into custody from court premises the two officials – Azhar Nadeem Ansari (operation manager) and Ikramul Haq (ex-operation manger) – of the Habib Bank’s Quaid-e-Azam Medical College (QAMC) branch, after their plea for confirmation of bail before arrest was rejected by the Bahawalpur bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC).

According to a hand-out, Ansari and Ikram were allegedly involved in a case of Rs100m embezzlement in the amount of salaries of the employees, including doctors of the Civil Hospital.

The ACE had registered an FIR against 11 suspects, including the two bank officials some two years ago.

Both the bank officials had got interim bail before arrest while their plea for its confirmation was dismissed by the court after the ACE officials opposed the grant of relief.

The ACE officials said they had to recover the allegedly embezzled amount from the bank officials and deposit it with the exchequer.

According to another official press release, the ACE claimed to have retrieved over 64 kanals of federal government land worth millions at Maitla village in Liquatpur tesil of Rahim Yar Khan district.

The press release said that several people, including Saifullah and others, in connivance with the field revenue staff had allegedly kept the land in illegal possession and had been cultivating crops on it for several years, earning millions of rupees illegally.

It said an FIR (No 36/2018) had been registered against the land grabber Saifullah, tehsildar Muhammad Ramzan, ex-gurdawar Rashid Ahmed and patwaris Abdul Hamead and Muhammad Irshad. However, no arrest has so far been made.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2018