KARACHI, March 14: An accountability court on Friday deferred the judgment in a reference pertaining to a land scam case against the former employees of the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) and the Sindh land utilisation department till March 19 on the request of the public prosecutor.

Earlier, the accused through their counsel had submitted an application for their acquittal from the case under the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) 2007.

The judge, Syed Aley Maqbool Rizvi, of the accountability court-1, had reserved the verdict for March 14 after recording arguments on the application from both sides.

However, the judgment was deferred since the public prosecutor requested the court to grant him some time as he wanted to discuss the matter with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as to why run the trial against private parties if the public office holders were acquitted from the case.

The accused R. B. Rahoo, Khan Mohammad Qureshi, the former employees of the Karachi Port Trust, and the ex-staffers of the Sindh land utilisation department, Ghulam Abbas Soomro, and Ramesh M. Odashi, faces charges of illegal transfer of government land to private parties.

According to the reference (8/07), the accused were involved in an illegal transfer and subsequent allotment of about 75 acres adjacent to Mai Kolachi Road to certain private parties.

Records showed that the Karachi Port Trust’s land in question was acquired for the city’s uplift and that no payment for the land was made by the provincial government to the KPT.

The reference stated that the land was fraudulently sold out to some private parties at a throwaway price, thereby causing a heavy loss to the government exchequer.

The former Sindh assembly speaker, Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah, was also nominated in the FIR on the grounds that the illegal allotments had been effected by his approval.

However, during the proceedings of the reference, he was found clear and acquitted. The case was lodged in 1996.