MUZAFFARABAD, Nov 27: The AJK Ehtesab Bureau has arrested a former AJK minister over charges of corruption.

Ehtesab Bureau chief prosecutor Sardar Ashiq Sadhozai told Dawn on Wednesday that Sardar Qamar Zaman Khan, minister for education in the previous PPP government, was arrested from his hometown, Bagh, late on Tuesday night. He was brought to the bureau’s Muzaffarabad sub-jail to be produced before the Ehtesab Court on Thursday.

Mr Sadhozai said that he had forced the principal of the Palandari Cadet College, Mumtaz K. Malik, to make payment to the tune of Rs2.8 million against the supply of furniture for the college. The supplier, he claimed, was a resident of Bagh and an alleged front man of the minister.

He said that the furniture was made of Kikar wood (acacia) instead of Shisham wood which was demanded in the tender notice and was also not worth more than Rs 500,000, he added.

The arrest was made after the former principal, who was arrested by the bureau last month in connection with the irregularities in the college, but later managed to secure release through bail, recorded his statement under Section 164 of the CrPC as an approver.

DEMONSTRATION: Around 60 activists of the People’s Students Federation (PSF) took out a procession from the Government Postgraduate College for Boys on Wednesday to protest against the arrest of the former AJK education minister, Sardar Qamar Zaman Khan.

The demonstrators blocked the road for some time outside the old campus of the AJK University, threatening that they would resort to violence if Mr Khan was not released.