Dar requests accountability court to unfreeze Hajvery Trust accounts

Insists the accounts must be restored for the 93 orphan boys and girls being looked after under it

ISLAMABAD: An accountability court on Wednesday issued notice to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on a petition by former finance minister Ishaq Dar that requests the court to grant approval for operating a welfare trust’s bank account so that orphan children do not suffer.

Accountability Court Judge Muhammad Bashir issued the notice for January 18 with directions for NAB to submit a reply to the petition, in which Dar has requested the court to grant approval to the trust to operate its account at Faysal Bank’s branch in Gulberg Lahore in the interest of justice and fair play.



In the petition, Dar’s counsels – Qausain Faisal Mufti and Qazi Mishbahul Hassan – said the bank had denied access to its account for the past few months and affairs of the trust were being managed by Shahida Naeem, its chairperson, from her own sources. They said the arrangement could not sustain any more.

The counsel said if the trust was not allowed to operate its account, there would be no body to take care of 93 orphans and the orphanage would have to be closed down leaving its inmates in the lurch. “[It] may result into an irreparable loss to the trust in general and to the orphans in particular,” the petition read.

The accountability court while hearing NAB’s reference accusing Dar of amassing assets beyond his known sources of income had issued warrants of attachment against his movable and immoveable properties just days after declaring him a proclaimed offender.

Later, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) stayed the trial till January 17 while raising a number of questions over the several orders passed by the accountability court. The IHC has told the minister’s counsel and the NAB’s prosecutor to argue if the trial court has “exercised its discretion in accordance with law.”



The division bench has sought arguments if the impugned orders through which the trial court issued bailable and non-bailable warrants for Dar and later declared him a proclaimed offender were “sustainable on the touchstone of reasonableness.”

The IHC has also questioned if time prescribed under section 87 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898 –  30 days – for declaring a suspect a proclaimed offender can be curtailed to 10 days under section 17 (c) of the NAB Ordinance of 1999 “in the absence of exceptional circumstances”.

The court has asked, “Whether in the facts and circumstances of the petition, particularly, when the petitioner wants the trial to continue, initiating proceedings against him were in consonance with law.”