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LAHORE, April 21: The NAB authorities on Monday arrested a co-accused of National Assembly former deputy speaker Haji Nawaz Khokhar from the Lahore High Court premises following the court’s refusal to grant him pre-arrest bail.
Naib tehsildar Muhammad Fayyaz, whose non-bailable arrest warrants had been issued by the accountability court earlier this month owing to his persistent absence from the proceedings, moved the LHC for grant of bail.
The trial court had also forfeited his sureties.
The accused pleaded that he had gone to the UK for medical treatment after getting bail from the LHC in 1997. He submitted that he did not abscond the proceedings, rather could not appear before the court owing to his prolonged ailment. He requested the court to set aside the orders of trial court and grant him bail.
NAB counsel Ali Tipu Khan argued that the accused was a fugitive and did not deserve ant relief. He had been absconding the proceedings at repeated intervals, thus he did not deserve to be granted bail.
The court dismissed the petition after which the NAB officials present outside the courtroom arrested him and took him to Chamba House. He will be produced before the trial court on Tuesday for his remand.
Fayyaz was accused of having caused a loss of Rs30 million to the national exchequer by attesting fake mutation of 150 kanals of Shamlat-i-Deh (land jointly owned by the villagers) at Loi Bhe village near Rawalpindi in the name of Nawaz Khokhar’s wife. Moreover, Nawaz Khokhar evaded Zila Council fee on this ill-gotten piece of land to the tune of Rs1.8 million.
NOTICE: The LHC issued notice to the State on the bail application of a co-accused of Seth Nisar.
Petitioner Abdul Qayyum, an assistant collector of customs, moved the LHC against his arrest as a co-accused of Seth Nisar. His counsel Javed Shaukat Malik submitted that his client had been arrested on the orders of the NAB chairman for having refused to sign a report which stated that a factory of Seth Nisar had the capacity to manufacture seamless pipes and precision shafts.
Counsel contended that it has been admitted in the reference that this report was fake and prepared by other co-accused just to import steel raw material in the name of a bogus company of Seth Nisar.
He submitted that since the impugned report was fake, his client did not commit an offence by refusing to sign it.
