Ex-NADRA chief wants FIR against him quashed

Tajwar questions rationale of filing case two years after alleged irregularities

ISLAMABAD: A former chairman of a key public institution has claimed that he is being politically victimised while his character was also being tarnished after the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) filed a case against him for alleged irregularities during his tenure.

This was stated by Shah Khawar, the counsel for Imtiaz Tajwar – a former chairman of National Database Regulatory Authority (NADRA), who filed a petition in Islamabad High Court (IHC) requesting that the case be immediately quashed.



“The… inquiry and registration of a case is not only illegal from its very inception but carried out on the whims and wishes of the high-ups sitting in the echelons of the Ministry of Interior for reasons best known to them,” Khawar stated in the petition.

In October 2016, the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had ordered the FIA to start formal investigations against Tajwar for alleged irregularities while he led the institution.

FIA’s Corporate Crime Circle in Islamabad had subsequently registered an FIR against Tajwar and two others under sections 409, 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 5(2)47 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947, at the FIA Corporate Crime Circle police station.

In the petition, Khawar contended that the FIR had been lodged with mala fide intention while eroding provisions of the FIA Act 1974, and the FIA (Inquiries and Investigation) Rules, 2002, and is liable to be quashed.

The counsel said that the alleged irregularities date back to 2014/15 while an enquiry was initiated in September 2016 –. He noted that Tajwar had been serving as an additional secretary in the ministry of Interior and had given an additional charge as NADRA chairman on January 13, 2014, till the appointment of a regular chairman in February 2016.



Khawar added that during this period, Tajwar had been promoted to BPS-22 in October 2014, and was posted as the Executive Director of the National Vocational & Training Commission.

Moreover, Khawar maintained that when the petitioner held the charge of NADRA’s chairman, the national database authority had earned a record profit of Rs3.8 billion. During this period, Tajwar claimed that he did not draw any salary or allowance.

Further, Khawar contended that in the two audit reports of NADRA, not irregularity or illegality had been pointed out.

“The petitioner has been accused under political victimisation and character assassination,” the petition read.

He urged the court to declare the FIR as unlawful and to quash it.

Meanwhile, the Special Court’s Central judge Malik Nazir Ahmed extended Tajwar’s interim bail till April 6 with directions to join in the investigation.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2017.