PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Tuesday adjourned the hearing into a petition and several attached applications challenging the powers of the National Accountability Bureau chairman to order the arrest of a suspect.

The NAB chief was also accused of politicising his organisation.

Petitioner Shahid Orakzai, a freelance journalist, asked Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Ahmad Ali that the case was of immense importance, so it should be heard by a bench headed by the chief justice.

The bench observed that the petitioner should file an application requesting the fixing of his case before the bench headed by the chief justice.

It added that it could not order the fixation of that petition before any other bench on its own.

In one of the applications, the petitioner accused eight NAB officials of raping an arrested woman and filming the rape in Jan this year.

Later in May, the petitioner had filed the main petition requesting the court to declare Section 24 of National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), related to powers of the NAB chairman to issue orders for the arrest of a suspect in conflict with the Constitution.

He claimed that the exercise of powers under that section was whimsical and discriminatory.

Following the surfacing of video and audio clips allegedly carrying conversation of the NAB chairman with a woman suspect, the petitioner had filed an application in the main petition for the ‘protection of women’ requesting the court that until the final disposal of the petition, Section 24 may be suspended and the court may forthwith stop any action under the ordinance including inquiry, investigation and trial of any woman anywhere in Pakistan.

He later filed another application the NAB chairman accusing him of politicising the organisation by working for interests of a political party and that every person arrested on his orders should be released on bail.

In that application, he also alleged that in Jan this year, a housewife was arrested by NAB Rawalpindi and was taken to Lahore for investigation, where the investigation officer had made her nude video.

He added that the video was shown to her husband, who also faced interrogation in the same office.

Few days ago, the petitioner filed another application in the main petition alleging therein that eight officials of the bureau including a deputy director had gang-raped that woman past midnight on Jan 15, 2019, after they had arrested her from Gulberg area in Islamabad.

He requested the court to issue arrest warrants for those suspects and direct the police to arrest them.

The high court had earlier issued notices to the attorney general for Pakistan and NAB in the main petition and the application related to surfacing of the alleged video of the chairman.

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2019