LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday directed a petitioner’s counsel to come up with convincing arguments in support of maintainability of his petition that questioned power of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to arrest a suspect before completion of investigation.

Senior advocate A.K Dogar appeared before the court of Justice Shahid Waheed to plead the petition of a lawyer and said section 24 (a) and (d) of the NAB Ordinance 1999 was in violation of article 10 (1) of the Constitution and required to be struck down.

He argued that the arrest of a person during investigation and trial was inconsistent with article 10 of the Constitution (safeguards as to arrest and detention).

The counsel asked the court to declare the impugned section of the NAB Ordinance 1999 as ultra vires of the Constitution and law laid down by the Supreme Court.

He further asked the court to restrain the NAB from arresting citizens under its ‘invalid’ powers and order release of hundreds of suspects who had been taken into custody by the anti-corruption watchdog.

The judge adjourned further hearing till Wednesday (today) and directed the counsel to convince the court on the maintainability of the petition.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2018