HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad circuit bench of the Sindh High Court on Wednesday granted pre-arrest bail for a sum of Rs50,000 each to 13 employees of food department, including two officers, in a wheat procurement scam case.

The applicants were booked in six different FIRs lodged by the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) in respect of wheat scam in Sanghar district. The ACE detected misappropriation of Rs455.78 million after the high court ordered an inquiry into the wheat procurement 2017-18 season.

Farhad Ali Abro advocate, who represented Ali Asghar Naich, acting deputy director of the food department, district food controller Munawar Arain, Ali Dost Zardari, Abid Ali Rind, Sarkar Magsi, Khadim Hussain, Ghulam Qadir and six others, contended that no loss was caused to the government exchequer by applicants.

He said the food department had claimed a loss of Rs455.78m in the wheat procurement. He said that gunny bags were issued to growers for procurement of wheat and the same bags were received by the food department.

Meanwhile, a special judge of anti-corruption (provincial) rejected the bail application of food inspector Saeeduddin of Sanghar on Wednesday who was involved in the same scam. He was also represented by Mr Abro.

Three get bail in paper leak case

The court granted bail to three accused in a case of examination paper’s leak of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) Hyderabad on Thursday for a sum of Rs100,000 each.

Mr Abro represented three applicants, including high school teacher Asim Mirza, Farhan and Chaman who were booked by B-section police station on the complaint of Javed Shaikh, a BISE official, under sections 406, 409, 34 PPC and 25 Telegraph Act.

The accused were employees of a government boys school. But Farhan was working as contractual worker for printing examination papers in BISE offices at the time of annual examinations.

Chaman used to serve him food with the permission of concerned BISE officials while Asim Mirza was friend of Farhan who was a privately hired employee of BISE’s contractor for printing of the papers within BISE premises. Chaman was a physically challenged man.

Papers of Physics-II, Zoology-II, Chemistry-II, English-II and Botany-II were leaked through a USB allegedly by Farhan to his friend Asim Mirza, whose daughter was appearing in the intermediate examination. Farhan had confessed that he had done it for his friend Asim.

Mr Abro contended that no paper or data was stored in the USB device and added that a secret branch official had himself become complainant in the case although he should have been booked. He said he had to check everything. He said he had allowed cell phone and USB inside the branch.

He said that no data was recovered to show that any communication was established between Farhan and anyone else. He said that only printing of his name on paper was taken as evidence for implicating him in the case.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2019