‘All cases closed by Qadir can be reopened’

Legal experts have said that all decisions taken by the PG and DC of the NAB may be challenged.

LAHORE: Legal experts have said that all decisions taken by the prosecutor general (PG) and deputy chairman (DC) of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), including closure of references, may be challenged since their appointments had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court (SC).

They were of the view that the SC declaration meant that all policy decisions undertaken by the prosecutor general, Irfan Qadir, and deputy chairman, Javed Zia Qazi, may be challenged.

On September 1, a three-member bench of the apex court had declared the appointments of Qadir and Qazi as illegal. Qadir was appointed as PG on May 4 this year while Qazi took charge as DC on June 14. However, Qadir after a few days of absence from office, returned claiming only the president could ask him to quit office.

Qadir is a former Lahore High Court judge removed after the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment on judges who took oath under the PCO after the SC had declared it illegal. After he took over as PG, three references against President Asif Ali Zardari including the Polo Ground reference, the ARY Gold reference and the Cotecna reference were withdrawn by the NAB.

A NAB official, seeking anonymity, told The Express Tribune that only a week before SC’s decision, Qadir shelved a reference against an SP in Sheikhupura Range. The official said that the investigation officer had been detained at the Islamabad office until the reference was withdrawn.

The official alleged that Qadir also had a role in the acquittal of PPP general secretary Jahangir Badar in a reference regarding illegal appointments in petroleum ministry. The official said that a prosecution witness produced before the accountability court, who gave a statement in favour of Badr, leading to his acquittal, was a ‘fake’. The original witness, Sui Southern Gas Pipeline’s human resources director Shahzad, and investigators of the reference were kept in the dark about this, he added. Next, he said, the PG directed against an appeal in the case.

Advocate AK Dogar told The Express Tribune that all decisions taken by Irfan Qadir can be reviewed after the SC declaration. “Wherever an illegality is determined, it must be fixed,” Dogar said.

Khawaja Harris, the Punjab advocate general, at whose petition the Supreme Court declared Qadir’s posting as illegal, said, “When the court has said that Irfan Qadir’s appointment is illegal then all the orders passed by Qadir are void and the cases closed with his signatures should also be reopened.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 14^th, 2010.