KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Thursday directed a federal law officer to file a list of inquiries, investigations and FIRs pending against former federal minister Babar Khan Ghauri till Dec 22.

A division bench headed by Justice K.K. Agha also summoned the director general of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Sindh, and asked its prosecutor to file details of pending matter against Mr Ghauri.

At the outset of the hearing, Inspector General of Sindh Police Ghulam Nabi Memon was in attendance and he assured the bench that in the light of previous order, he would compile a list of inquiries, investigations, FIRs and cases pending against the former shipping minister in the next hearing.

The bench noted that in the last hearing, the NAB prosecutor had sought time to gather required information, but on Thursday he requested for further time which was completely unjustified as the last order had been passed around six weeks ago.

It also directed NAB to file list of inquiries, FIRs and investigation pending against the former minister with respect to the federal government on next hearing.

Initially, the former minister through his attorney had petitioned the SHC in June and submitted that he was abroad and willing to come back and surrender before trial courts to face trial and had sought protective bail.

Subsequently the SHC had granted him protective bail in a corruption reference and a money-laundering and terror financing case.

Thereafter, an additional prosecutor general of Sindh and an assistant advocate general informed the SHC that the petitioner had again left the country after getting bail in pending cases from trial courts.

The lawyer for the petitioner argued that the former minister feared that he would be arrested when he would return again to Pakistan on the basis of some known inquiries and sought directives for respondents to provide details whether any such inquiry/investigation was pending against the petitioner so that he could obtain protective or transitory bail prior to his return to the country.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2022