LAHORE, Nov 18: Detained foreign exchange dealer Munaf Kalia spent three hours in a private hospital here on Tuesday and his lawyer accused the Federal Investigation Agency officials of ‘severely torturing’ his clients for ‘not cooperating’.
Advocate Akram Shaikh quoted his client as saying that he and Javed Khanani had been ‘advised’ by the officials to cooperate if they wanted to ‘save their skin’.
Mr Shaikh, a former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, also alleged that his clients had been kept awake the whole night.
He said he had been allowed to see his clients only twice, but in the ‘presence of FIA officials’. And, therefore, his clients could not explain the ‘real reasons’ for their detention.
He said his clients had done ‘nothing illegal’, adding that they had been instrumental in bringing in a huge amount of foreign exchange into the country.
“The move is politically-motivated, affecting business transactions involving $10.4 million a day,” he said.
M Shaikh said allegations levelled against Khanani and Kalia in the police report were ‘very weak’ and could not be substantiated.
He said the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan had already maintained that the company operated by his clients had been doing business within the ‘legal framework’ and the FIA had not consulted the central bank before initiating the action.
He also claimed that the case was ‘baseless’ and the investigation agency was ‘only holding a media trial’ of the accused.
“If the FIA had anything concrete against my clients, it would have made it public by now,” he said.
Mr Shaikh said he would move the Lahore High Court after the completion of the physical remand.
The Khanani and Kalia company is being accused of ‘physically transferring’ foreign currency aboad and also of running an ‘illegal Hawala or Hundi business’.
The FIA was granted physical remand of both the accused after they were presented before the court this week.
FIA officials declined to comment on Mr Shaikh’s remarks, but said the interior ministry had strictly ordered them ‘not to utter a word’ about the issue.
Meanwhile, the SBP has reportedly frozen over 100 bank accounts operated by Khanani and Kalia on FIA’s request.
In a related development, FIA’s Lahore wing has teamed up with an investigation team in Karachi to retrieve data from the main server of the company, which reportedly contain a complete record of all transactions made by the company over the past six months.