Curbing corruption: FIR registered against officer who died five years ago

Former agriculture EDO resigned in 2008, died in 2010

KARACHI: The Sindh government's anti-corruption department is hell bent on rounding up all corrupt officers in the bureaucracy, so much so that it is going after officials who are no longer in this world.

The anti-corruption committee, headed by the chief secretary, has ordered the registration of an FIR against a former agriculture executive district officer (EDO), Kamber Shahdadkot, Khadim Hussain, who retired from his post in 2008 and died two years later.

The orders for the FIR against Hussain have annoyed his family. "If my father was corrupt then why were the cases not registered against him when he was alive?" questioned Hussain's son, Aakash, while speaking to The Express Tribune. The department also lodged FIRs against two others, office superintendent Khuda Bux and accounts clerk Mazhar Ali.

The trio is accused of misappropriating Rs1.3 million by showing disbursement to labour. Official sources in the anti-corruption establishment said that around nine FIRs have been ordered without verification against deceased officers. The anti-corruption establishment director, Nazar Muhammad Bozdar, initially insisted that Hussain was alive, saying that the government could not lodge a case against a dead person. When reports of Hussain's death were brought to his attention, Bozdar said, "We have not yet registered the case against him but just issued orders."

Earlier, the anti-corruption chairperson and director were of the opinion that any approval given by anti-corruption committee is binding and process for the registration of an FIR is done on war-footing basis.

Bozdar said that they don't register cases against the deceased and they have already disposed of such cases.

Earlier, while briefing the chief minister, the chairperson of the anti-corruption establishment, Mumtaz Ali Shah, claimed that 209 cases have been initiated against government officers of grades one to 20, and 72 FIRs have been registered against them, while 52 officers have already been arrested during this drive.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2015.