Sindh High Court extends pre-arrest bail of Sharjeel Memon

Bail petition not maintainable, NAB argues

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court [SHC] extended, on Thursday, interim pre-arrest bail to former provincial information minister and Pakistan Peoples Party [PPP] leader Sharjeel Inam Memon in two cases pertaining to over Rs5 billion corruption in the advertisements and allotment of thousand acres of land to a private property developer.

The SHC division bench, headed by Justice Muhammad Junaid Ghaffar, extended the interim bail and put off the matter till May 25, the date of next hearing.



The bench asked the accused to submit a reply to the response submitted by National Accountability Bureau [NAB] against his bail. NAB had submitted before the court that the petition filed by Memon in the SHC was not maintainable and that he wanted to circumvent the normal process of criminal proceeding. It requested the court to dismiss the bail petition filed by him.

NAB had filed a reference against the PPP leader for allegedly causing Rs5.76 billion loss to the national exchequer through embezzlement in the Sindh government's advertisement campaign on electronic media.



The top anti-graft body had also summoned him for questioning into another case pertaining to allotting vast lands in the outskirts of the city to a real estate giant illegally and on throw-away prices, thus, causing an additional loss to the national exchequer.

Memon, on the other hand, has been defending himself. He maintains that he is being politically victimised and all the cases against him are cooked up. He was initially granted bail on March 30 against a surety of Rs2 million in each case.