PESHAWAR, Feb 15: Special anti-corruption, judge Ghulam Mohiuddin Khan, on Tuesday convicted three former officials of the defunct Frontier Cooperative Bank of forgery and corruption and sentenced them on different counts to a total of three years' rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs100,000 each.

The officials, assistant registrar Roohullah Khan, cooperative inspector Maqsood Ali and Sheikh Fazal Kareem, were charged with establishing forged cooperative societies and acquiring loan in their name.

The court observed that the prosecution had proved its case against the three accused and it was proved that they had misused their offices. The sentences awarded to the accused included one-year imprisonment with a fine of Rs50,000 under section 420 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC); six months of imprisonment with a fine of Rs10,000 under section 468 and 471 of the PPC; one-year imprisonment with a fine of Rs30,000 under section 409 of the PPC; and six-month imprisonment with a fine of Rs10,000 under section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947.

The prosecution alleged that the accused persons had formed fictitious societies in the Shahi Bala Faqirabad and Shahi Payan Haji Kalae areas of Peshawar. They acquired loans from the bank in the names of those societies and did not repay them.

BAIL DISMISSED: Four people, including a patwari, were arrested after their pre-arrest bail petitions were dismissed by an anti-corruption court on Tuesday. The patwari, Nazeer Muhammad, and three others, Fazal Kareem, Hakeem Shah and Abdul Ghaffar, are accused of fraudulently transferring properties of two boys on their names.