LAHORE: A four-member Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) team has been constituted to conduct a forensic audit of the Bahauddin Zakariya University’s (BZU) affiliated as well as recently disaffiliated private law colleges.

The BZU Multan recently disaffiliated 30 private law colleges for allegedly giving illegal admissions to 14,000 students in three-year LLB courses, following the Supreme Court order to cancel affiliation of the illegal colleges in 2018.

The court on Sept 15 last directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to hold a scrutiny into alleged illegal admissions made by 32 law colleges affiliated with the BZU and gave it four weeks to submit its findings. A two-member bench comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Sayyed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi heard the matter related to mushroom growth of private law colleges under the BZU umbrella and for not implementing the court order.

The FIA has constituted a team and the notification available with Dawn states that FIA Punjab Zone-II Faisalabad Director is the convener, FIA Circle Multan Director Abdul Ahad Sangri is head and other members are FIA Circle Multan Assistant Director Moazzam Ali and FIA Circle Multan sub-inspector Adil Ayub. The FIA team will probe the genuineness of candidates of LLB part-I second annual examinations held in 2022 and affiliated private law colleges. The team will also procure the record to examine the money trail and undertake a forensic analysis/ audit of the same in consultation with the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC).

The court also directed the FIA to establish a money trail to recover cash from the BZU and the private colleges to compensate the students.

The law colleges in question gave admissions to around 14,000 students in the three-year LLB programme on campuses in the back dates.

One of the members of the FIA team told Dawn that they were collecting record of the admissions and colleges. He said around 6,000 students appeared in the 2022 examination and the remaining students were already declared illegal because they were not given a chance to appear in the examination.

He said they would have to check how much fee was charged from the students and how many employees of the BZU and private colleges were involved in the scam. He said the team would submit the report on Oct 25.

Earlier, the then governor, Chaudhry Sarwar, had ordered the BZU VC to fix the responsibility in the private law colleges scam after a three-member committee looked into findings of an inquiry and identified the culprits who had allowed 41 affiliated colleges to flout rules to enroll more than 10,000 students.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2022