PESHAWAR: Senior special judge (anti-corruption) Babar Ali Khan has acquitted finance manager of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) and three other people, who were charged withattempting to misappropriate government funds by submitting Rs7.7 million worth of fake bills to the provincial accountant general’s office.

The judge ruled that the prosecution had miserably failed to prove the charges leveled against the four accused, including EPI finance manager Syed Shahzad Ali Shah, storekeeper of the health department Zahid Ali, owner of the firm supplying goods to the health department Hashmat Ali and citizen Khizar Hayat.

The FIR of the alleged crime was registered by the Anti-Corruption Establishment police station on June 18, 2014, under the Prevention of Corruption Act’s Section 5(2) and the Pakistan Penal Code’s sections 109, 409, 419, 420, 468, 471 and 511.

The prosecution claimed that pursuant to a media report regarding the filing of fake and bogus bills amounting to Rs7.7 million from the EPI, health department, to the office of the accountant general, an inquiry was conducted by the relevant department showing that signatures of officials on those bills were fictitious.

They were accused of submitting fake bills to AG office

It added that the matter was also probed by the ACE, which held the accused responsible for the preparation of fake bills with bogus signatures of the relevant officers and thus, attempting to cause a loss to the exchequer.

Initially, the ACE arrested Shehzad Ali, Zahid Ali and Hashmat Ali. Khizar Hayat was later taken into custody over fake signatures of officials.

The court ruled that after going through the statements of the prosecution witnesses coupled with available records, it became crystal clear that statements of those witnesses were not in line with each other and rather, they had completely failed to fix vicarious liability of the offence on either of the accused.

About testimony of office-dispatcher of the department Rehman Khan that he had burnt certain record on direction of the prime accused Shehzad, it observed that the witness neither pointed out the relevant place where the said documents were burnt nor had he handed over any burnt material to the investigation officer.

The judge added that if the statement of the investigation officer of the case was taken into consideration, the same was filled with lacunas and contradictions.

Advocate Farooq Malik appeared for the accused Shehzad and Khizar and contended that while the prosecution claimed that the inquiry was conducted pursuant to publishing of a news item, the investigation officer had not recorded the statement of the relevant newspaper reporter about it.

He argued that the investigation officer had neither verified the source of the information conveyed to the reporter nor had he recorded the statement of the relevant auditor of the AG office.

The counsel contended that the witnesses had categorically admitted that no loss whatsoever had been caused to the government exchequer and no illegal gain had been made by either of the accused facing trial.

He added that even if the bills were cleared by the AG office, the cheques won’t be released to the prime accused and rather, the same would have been sent to the health department and would have been of no benefit to the accused.

Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2022