SUKKUR: Sukkur jail superintendent Mumtaz Ahmed Raja on Tuesday submitted his reply to the show-cause notice issued to him by the local accountability court with regard to his failure to hand over an under-custody suspect to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and misleading the court twice to avoid compliance.

The court fixed the matter for Feb 18.

The court had twice asked the jail chief to hand over Abdul Razzak Bahrani, a contractor who has been named in a NAB reference as the alleged frontman of CM’s Adviser on Prisons Mir Aijaz Jakhrani.

The show-cause notice asked the jail superintendent as to why a contempt notice should not be issued to him for the defiance.

Earlier this month, the Sukkur NAB had filed an application in the accountability court seeking physical remand of Bahrani for investigation into Reference No. 17/2019.

The court noted that the jail chief misled it on Feb 7 and 10. It recalled that Bahrani was ordered to be handed over to NAB first on Feb 7 but the jail chief submitted in court that the suspect was sent to Karachi for the hearing of another case though he [suspect] was not required to appear in any such hearing that day. It further noted that Bahrani was next ordered to be handed over to NAB on Feb 10 but the jail superintendent submitted a letter in court informing it that he had been admitted to the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) on Feb 9. The court pointed out that the medical reports of the suspect attached with the letter did not support the claim about his health condition.

The jail superintendent was asked to explain his position as to why he defied the court orders and misled it with his false statements. He was also asked as to why he allowed shifting of Bahrani to the NICVD without verifying facts from the medical reports.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2020