PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has issued show cause notices to its 22 employees seeking their explanation for illegally drawing the Benazir Income Support Programme financial assistance.

The federal government had identified a total of 221 employees of the high court and its circuit benches, and district, anti-terrorism and labour courts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Of them, 22 belong to the high court.

According to a news release issued here, the high court also directed the district and sessions judges of the province to take disciplinary action against the employees of their respective establishments over the anomaly.

The government had earlier deleted the names of more than 800,000 ineligible beneficiaries from BISP lists. The government had claimed that the names were removed after thorough inquiry.

Of them, 14,730 were government employees and 127,826 wives of government employees.

ACQUITTED: A high court bench has acquitted two people on an extortion charge by setting aside their conviction by an anti-terrorism court.

Justice Roohul Amin Khan and Justice Mohammad Naeem Anwar accepted the acquittal appeal of convicts Nazeem and Shahzad, both residents of Bajaur tribal district, observing that the prosecution had failed to prove the charge against them.

The two were sentenced to 18 years imprisonment each by an anti-terrorism court on Nov 19, 2019.

Shabbir Hussain Gigyani, lawyer for the appellants, said his clients were arrested by the counter terrorism department on the charge of seeking extortion money from Jehangir Khan, who owns the Jehangir Safi Chappal Makers shop.

He said the prosecution had alleged that his clients had used Afghan and Pakistani SIM cards to extort money for the proscribed militant outfit, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

The lawyer claimed that the case was poorly investigated by the officials concerned as they had not collected vital evidence.

He said while the prosecution claimed of making phone calls by the appellants from different numbers, they had not collected evidence regarding ownership of the said SIM cards.

The lawyer said there was no evidence on record to connect his clients with the commission of the offence.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2020