LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday granted post-arrest bail to former Lahore Development Authority director general Ahad Cheema in the LDA City housing scheme case as the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) opted not to contest the bail.

NAB Special Prosecutor Faisal Bokhari told a two-judge bench that the case had been closed as those affected in the case had been assured that they would be given their plots. He said the NAB had no plan to file any reference and it would not oppose the petition if the Cheema was given bail in the case.

Earlier, Cheema’s counsel Azam Nazir Tarar argued that more than one-and-a-half years had passed but the NAB failed to file reference. He said the bureau initially arrested Cheema in the Ashiana Iqbal Housing Scheme case on Feb 21, 2018, exhausted 90-day physical remand and then diverted (his arrest) to illegal assets and the LDA City case.

The counsel said no one had been implicated in the case except Cheema, which showed mala fide of the NAB.

The bench comprising Justice Tariq Abbasi and Justice Chaudhry Mushtaq Ahmad allowed the bail petition of Cheema in the LDA City case. It adjourned hearing of Cheema’s petitions for bail in Ashiana and assets cases as the prosecutor said Additional Prosecutor Jahanzeb Bharwana would argue on behalf of the NAB.

At first, the bench expressed dismay over the request and later adjourned hearing till Feb 11.

Former chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar had also taken suo motu of the LDA City and summoned Cheema from jail. During a hearing at the SC Lahore registry, Cheema had explained to the chief justice that the LDA decided to outsource acquisition of land for the housing scheme to avoid litigation. He said a big housing scheme of the authority namely LDA Avenue-I suffered inordinate delay in completion due to litigation.

Therefore, he said, the government adopted the idea of public-private partnership from the model of the DHA. Cheema had claimed that the process of land acquisition was going on smoothly till the intervention by the NAB.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2020