KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday issued notices to the provincial authorities on a petition seeking constitution of a commission for a probe into the alleged torture of a detained former chairman of the Fishermen Cooperative Society (FCS).

The wife of former FCS chairman Nisar Ahmed Memon aka Nisar Morai, who is facing trial in a corruption reference before an accountability court, moved the SHC and submitted that her husband was detained in the district prison Malir and when on July 26, the adviser to chief minister on prisons visited the detention facility, Morai and some other inmates had complained to him about the mismanagement of jail by the prison authorities and collection of weekly “protection money” from the inmates.

The petitioner alleged that her husband was moved from Malir to the central prison by the jail authorities around midnight as revenge and a deputy superintendent of the central jail allegedly subjected him to torture during the shifting at the behest of the IG prisons. She pleaded for constitution of a commission to probe the matter.

A two-judge bench of the SHC headed by Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro issued notices to the home department and other respondents for Nov 12.

In another petition, she also pleaded for transfer of the IG prisons by arguing that he had mostly remained on the post for past 10 years.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had filed a reference last year against Morai and Abdul Saeed Khan, former FCS vice chairman Sultan Qamar Siddiqui and 10 other officials and contractors for allegedly misusing their authority, embezzlement of funds, illegal appointments and awarding fake contracts during 2014-15 causing a loss of over Rs343 million to the national exchequer.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2019