Court convicts PTI lawmaker to three years imprisonment

Sachanand denies allegations, vows to challenge verdict in SHC

HYDERABAD: A Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MPA elected on a reserved seat for minorities has been convicted to three years imprisonment by a local court in Sanghar district on Thursday.

MPA Diwan Sachanand, 51, was charged with issuing a cheque of Rs10 million against land purchase but the sum of money was not available in his account and the cheque bounced.



Sachanand, who is one of the two minority MPAs of PTI in Sindh, has been found guilty of the offence more than five years after murky transaction. Muhammad Ayub Rajput, a transporter, had registered the FIR under sections 420 and 489 of the Pakistan Penal Code against him at Tando Adam police station on January 23, 2013.

However, the complainant passed away three years ago on March 30, 2015. But after his death, his son Muhammad Ali Rajput became the complainant and pursued the case.

At the court of civil judge and judicial magistrate I in Tando Adam, Kamran Ali Kalhoro, the case was expected to be wound up earlier but Sachanand’s father died on December 18 after which the accused sought adjournment of the hearing.

During the hearings, Advocate Noor Muhammad Rind pleaded on behalf of the MPA while advocate Abdul Majeed Baloch was the complainant’s counsel. The police arrested Sachanand from the court’s premises after his conviction.



Talking to the media later in the police station, the MPA said he has been sentenced on a fake allegation. He added that he will challenge the judgment in the Sindh High Court.

According to him, the dispute between him and Rajput was also heard separately by influential political persons like Mir Nadir Khan Magsi, Muhammad Khan Junejo and Fida Hussain Dero, who all belong to Pakistan Peoples Party, at different times. He claimed that all of them gave decisions in his favour and declared the allegation of defaulting payment of money as fake.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2019.