Fake deal: ACE obtains remand for Bahria Town employees

The officials to be interrogated over land scam.

RAWALPINDI:

Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) investigators obtained three days physical custody of the two employees of Bahria Town from the court on Tuesday. They said they wanted to interrogate the accused for their hand in the land scam case in which the private housing authority allegedly bought 1400 acres of land on forged documents.

Special Judge Anti-Corruption Court Malik Nazir Ahmed handed over the legal custody of Colonel (retd) Saeed Akhtar, Bahria Town general manager and Muhammad Iqbal, the site supervisor, for three days to the ACE after the investigators sought the remand.

Advocate Malik Waheed Anjum representing the arrested accused, opposed the remand request saying that Bahria Town was victim in the case and not the accused party as they paid Rs8.5 million to purchase 1,401 kanal land in Rawat area.

“We were conned by the revenue officials who presented forged documents and made up fictitious names of the owners, to sell the land to us,” he said.

The ACE prosecutor, however, urged on the court to grant the remand to make it easy for the investigators to gather evidence and reach at the conclusion in the case. In his statement to the ACE investigators, Bahria Town Chief Executive Malik Riaz Ahmed said that his firm was not involved in any fraud and they had been deprived of the land they had paid for. Further, he said his company got a criminal case registered with Rawat police after they could not get the land.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2011.