LAHORE, June 21: Former National Assembly deputy speaker Haji Nawaz Khokhar has moved the Lahore High Court with an appeal, challenging his conviction awarded by an accountability court last week.
An Ehtesab bench of the LHC on Monday issued notice to the government after accepting the appeal for hearing. The accountability court sentenced Mr Khokhar to three-year rigorous imprisonment and awarded Rs1,896,000 fine in a reference, which accused him of not depositing in time the commutation fee for the purchase of land near Islamabad.
The fine amount equalled the commutation fee that he deposited with the public treasury after the reference had been filed. Petitioner's counsel Manzoor Ahmad Malik challenged the NAB court sentence and described it as illegal.
He said the reference against Mr Khokhar was filed under the Ehtesab Ordinance of 1996, but he was charged in accordance with the provisions of the Ehtesab Ordinance of 1997 and convicted under the NAB Ordinance of 1999.
Therefore, the reference was illegal because the Supreme Court had decided in a case (PLD 200 SC 26) in favour of similarity of the law for conviction. According to the reference, Mr Khokhar, now a PPP leader, had failed to remit the commutation fee charged to him on the purchase and transfer of 150 acres around Islamabad in the 1980s.
The court also disqualified the former NA deputy speaker from contesting and holding a representative public office for 10 years. Five other accused, including three tehsildars and a qanoongo, were acquitted of abetting in the offence.
Mr Khokhar also was absolved in two other charges as framed in a reference sent in Dec 1996, which said he illegally got possession of the land of shamlat deh and showed another 67 kanals as gift, though it was purchased.
He is now serving sentence at the Central Prison at Kot Lakhpat, Lahore. The reference was made out in Dec 1997 and charges against him framed the following year. This was one of the earliest references made out when the concept of accountability of political leaders was introduced.