13 officers involved in Ring Road scandal acquitted

Thirteen bureaucrats, including former commissioner Capt (retd) Muhammad Mehmood and Land Acquisition Collector Waseem Ali Tabish, involved in the Rawalpindi Ring Road corruption scandal have been acquitted, according to an order issued by the Establishment Division on Saturday.

Last year, the length of the Rawalpindi Ring Road, intended to relieve the city of traffic congestion, had been increased to 23 kilometres to allegedly benefit a housing society and other potential estate developers in the area for which the government had to shell out Rs20 billion to buy additional land.

When the case came to light, the former PTI government set up a three-member committee to hold an inquiry.

Strangely, the committee submitted two reports, one by its head, the then Rawalpindi Commissioner Syed Gulzar Hussain Shah, which laid most of the blame on bureaucrats who allegedly favoured some housing societies, and the other by the two other committee members, which claimed the changes were approved by higher-ups.

The Rawalpindi Ring Road was conceived during the previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) tenure and revised by the former Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government.

Read Rawalpindi Ring Road project hits a snag

The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE), Punjab, tasked with the investigation, had given a clean chit to the then Chief Minister Usman Buzdar and former federal cabinet members in the scandal.

In its report submitted to former prime minister Imran Khan, the ACE found three bureaucrats – former Rawalpindi commissioner Mehmood, ex-deputy project director Muhammad Abdullah and Tabish – guilty of corruption, misuse of authority and conflict of interests. The three men had been booked.

“Mehmood and Tabish are already behind bars,” the then Punjab ACE DG Gohar Nafees had revealed at a news conference in July last year. “The findings of the ACE are based on an inquiry team analysing 21,000 documents and interrogating 100 officers.”

After coming to power in April, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been chairing the meetings held to investigate the allegations.

Premier Shehbaz re-investigated the serious allegations levelled against the 13 officers.

In the investigation, the civil officers, including the former commissioner, have been declared innocent.

The Establishment Division also issued a notification of innocence of the officers.