LAHORE: An accountability court on Tuesday formally approved a request of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for the closure of a last inquiry into illegal appointments against Punjab Assembly Speaker Parvez Elahi.

The NAB had filed a reference seeking a final approval of the trial court to close the inquiry against Elahi.

NAB’s special prosecutor Hafiz Asadullah Awan told the court that many nominated suspects in the reference including the beneficiaries of the alleged illegal appointments either died or retired. He said the available evidence was not enough to establish the charge of misuse of authority to make illegal appointments against Mr Elahi.

After hearing the arguments of the prosecutor, duty judge Sajjad Ahmad Sheikh allowed the reference and approved the closure of the inquiry, which accused Elahi of making illegal appointments during his stint as local government minister in 1993.

On May 3, the court had also allowed two other references of the NAB and approved closure of two separate inquiries of assets beyond means against PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Parvez Elahi.

A third inquiry on charges of loan default against the duo had already been closed with the approval of the trial court.

The Chaudhry brothers, a major ally of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government, had challenged these inquiries before the Lahore High Court alleging that the NAB had been used for political engineering. The court, during December last, had expressed concern over the pendency of the inquiries for 20 years and ordered the NAB to conclude the same within four weeks.

The PML-Q leaders had pleaded that all the inquiries against them had been recommended for closure by the investigating officers and the regional board of the NAB during 2017 and 2018. However, they said sitting chairman of the NAB, retired justice Javed Iqbal, approved reinvestigation and bifurcation of the inquiries against them after a period of 20 years.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2021