DG NAB Lahore moves IHC against PAC in Tayyaba Gul case

Shahzad Saleem challenges PAC's authority to initiate inquiry, says Tayyaba Gul has 'relevant forums available'

ISLAMABAD:

Director General (DG) of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Major (retd) Shahzad Saleem approached the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday against the Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC) decision to summon him following Tayyaba Gul's harassment allegations.

The National Assembly secretary, PAC Wing and others were made a party to the petition filed by the DG NAB, which states that the notice issued by the PAC was beyond its jurisdiction and therefore seeking it to be declared null and void by the court.

The petitioner further requested the court to issue a stay order on the PAC notice, contending that the woman already has applications pending in a Lahore accountability court and another in the Federal Shariat Court.

Shehzad Saleem further alleged that there is “a possibility that the petition being filed for personal gains could not be ruled out” and argued that the woman in question has other “relevant forums available”. The PAC has gone beyond its powers to initiate this inquiry, the NAB official said in the petition.

“A NAB inquiry against the PAC chairman is already pending,” Saleem said, alleging that “it was also possible that the chairman wanted to take revenge or gain some advantage by summoning [NAB officials] in this way”.

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He also added that the chairman’s “conduct has been that he boasts of his disloyalty to the very party through which he was elected”.

It is pertinent to mention here that Gul had alleged before the PAC that the DG NAB along with others installed cameras in a room at the bureau’s Lahore Office, stripped her naked and made videos that were later shown to her husband to mentally torture him when he was in a custody in ‘fake’ cases.

“I was stripped naked and videos were made,” Gul sobbed. Her throat felt swollen and she stuttered before saying: “I was taken to a room, cameras were installed, officials conducted frisking, stripped me naked, laughed at me and my videos were made.”

When asked by the PAC chief who did it, Gul named DG NAB Shahzad Saleem, Kashif Masroor, Imran Dogar and several others. Despite a court order, she said, her medical test was not conducted, adding that her signature was taken on a blank paper, the content of which later stated that she did not want the medical examination.

The PAC chairman, who ensured that incumbent NAB Chairman Zahir Shah stayed in the meeting while Gul recorded her statement, ordered the suspension of officials named in her statement until an inquiry was completed. He directed Shah to collect evidence and lodge a first information report (FIR) as such brutality and criminality couldn’t be tolerated.

In the first major reshuffle in the National Accountability Bureau since the PML-N-led government came to power on April 11, the then NAB Chairman, Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal, re-appointed Major (retd) Shahzad Saleem as Director-General Lahore, replacing incumbent Jamil Ahmad.