KARACHI, July 19: Malik Riaz Hussain, a real estate tycoon, was on Thursday given bail for one month in a Bahria Town corruption case by the Sindh High Court.

A single-judge bench headed by Justice Farooq Ali Channa gave him protective bail without touching the merits of the case, registered in 2009 by the Anti-Corruption Establishment, Rawalpindi.

The anti-corruption judge of Rawalpindi had issued non-bailable warrants for the arrest of the business tycoon, who appeared before the SHC along with his counsel, Advocate Shaukat Hiyat, and moved his application for protective bail in the case.

The bench gave him bail in the sum of Rs1 million and directed him to appear before the trial court within one month.

Counsel Hiyat contended that his client was not named initially in the FIR registered by the ACE. Neither was his client shown as an accused in the first charge-sheet submitted by the investigation agency in Oct 2011 in the trial court.

He said that six accused persons — Adnan B. Kiyani, sub-tehsildar, Muhammad Hussain, Nazir Hussain, Rizwan Iqbal (patwari) Col (retd) Akhtar Saeed and Muhammed Iqbal were charge-sheeted for selling 1,411 kanals to the Bahria Town by forgery in fictitious names.

However, he submitted, later the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court directed the ACE to re-investigate the case on the application of one of the accused persons and subsequently 16 accused, including Malik Riaz, were shown accused in the charge-sheet.

The counsel stated that his client joined the course of investigation and explained his innocence in the offence, but the investigation officer recommended his name for judicial action without showing any iota of material against his client. He said the applicant learnt about the issuance of NBWs against him on July 18 through the media.

He said that his client was continuously subjected to harassment and political victimisation under the influence of local MNA who was opposing the Bahria Town projects since its beginning as hundreds of thousands of members of the project were the voters in the constituency who were being treated as political opponents.

Advocate Hiyat stated that Malik Riaz was in Karachi for his business engagements and he wished to approach the trial court or the high court in Rawalpindi for the purpose of bail and defence.

He prayed to the court to grant Malik Riaz protective bail for eight weeks so that he could surrender himself before the trial court for the purpose of obtaining bail and engage lawyers for his defence in the case.

However, the court granted him protective bail for one month.

KARACHI, July 19: Malik Riaz Hussain, a real estate tycoon, was on Thursday given bail for one month in a Bahria Town corruption case by the Sindh High Court.