ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has called for a probe by a parliamentary committee into suicide allegedly committed by a retired army officer against whom the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was conducting multiple inquiries.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, PPP secretary general Farhatullah Babar, former Senate chairman Nayyar Bokhari and party’s media coordinator Nazir Dhoki demanded that the NAB chairman should be removed till the completion of inquiries.

Mr Babar, in an apparent reference to the suicide note left behind by retired Brigadier Asad Munir whose body was found in his Islamabad apartment on Friday, said that NAB had “tortured” and “humiliated” him so much that he ended his life.

Babar alleges NAB has turned into a ‘political institution’

He said the NAB chairman had no right to stay in his office till the completion of the inquiries.

The retired army officer had stated in the purported suicide note that he was committing suicide to avoid humiliation, being handcuffed and paraded in front of the media.

In the same note, he had requested the chief justice “to take notice of NAB officials’ conduct so that other government officials are not convicted for the crimes they had not committed”.

He stated that since April 2017 NAB had made his life “miserable”.

The PPP secretary general alleged that NAB had turned into a “political institution” and was being used for “political engineering”.

Mr Bokhari said that no institution or individual was above the law, alleging that NAB had gone out of control.

He said a committee comprising members of both houses of parliament should be constituted to probe the death of Brig Munir.

He said the committee could summon NAB Chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal and other officials in connection with the inquiry into the suicide of Mr Munir.

The PPP leaders also expressed reservations over the shifting of the fake bank accounts case against Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur from Karachi to Rawalpindi.

They feared that NAB could arrest the PPP leadership in near future. They, however, said that they were not afraid of jails as they had seen prisons in the past too.

Meanwhile, the PPP leaders criticised the government for its alleged failure to implement the National Action Plan against terrorism.

Mr Babar said that on the one hand the government was talking about elimination of terror outfits but on the other it had used the shoulder of China to save Jaish-e-Muhammad leader Maulana Masood Azhar at the United Nations.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2019