KARACHI, Nov 14: Special Judge Anti-Corruption Court Syed Gul Munir Shah on Wednesday adjourned the hearing of a corruption case against a director-general in the provincial agriculture department and the market committee officials of the new Sabzi Mandi till Nov 24 on a request of defence counsel.

A member of defence lawyers panel through an application requested the court for adjournment of the hearing due to the absence of senior defence counsel Nawab Sheikh.

Sindh Agriculture Department (extension wing) Director-General Naeem Ahmed Korejo, market committee’s administrator G.M. Chakrani, secretary Saeed-ul-Hasan Zaidi, and a section officer of the PMP, agriculture department, Ashiq Hussein, are facing charges of corruption in the land scam that involved millions of rupees.

According to prosecution, the case was registered on the basis of an inquiry into a complaint (No 249/07) of the anti-corruption establishment. The officials are accused of having converted 164 amenity plots into shops. Some of these plots had been reserved for a fire station, a service station, a weighbridge and lavatories under the master plan of Karachi. During the inquiry a raid was conducted on July 19 on the office of market committee in Gulshan-i-Iqbal and the relevant record was seized. It showed that the accused acted without the permission of the competent authority and in violation of the approved layout plan.

Defence counsel argued that the accused had done nothing wrong since land allotment was the duty of a high-powered committee while his clients were merely the signing authority.

Earlier the hearing was adjourned on Oct 31 for two weeks on a request of the defence counsel of Ghulam Nabi Chakrani who had sought time for studying the case.