The counsel said his client was granted pre-arrest bail in November last year. PHOTO: PPI
The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday accepted the petition of former DG Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) Qazi Laiq against his physical remand and sent the accused to Central Prison Peshawar on judicial remand instead. Laiq is accused of leasing out valuable government land at a throwaway price.
The division bench of Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Abdul Latif Khan accepted the petition. It also put the NAB chairman on notice over the suspect’s bail application in the same case.
The counsel of the accused told the court the land in question measures five kanals and is located near Iqra University in Hayatabad. The bench was further informed that six others accused in the same case had been released on bail.
The counsel said his client was granted pre-arrest bail in November last year, but that was not extended and NAB arrested Laiq on February 28. The bureau also obtained his physical remand which expires on March 12 from an accountability court. The counsel contended that NAB planned on obtaining an extended physical remand which was illegal.
NAB Prosecutor Azeem Dad told the bench the suspect was remanded in NAB’s custody for investigation purposes and the case was being heard by an accountability court. He added the lower court maintained the authority to decide whether or not to extend the remand.
After hearing arguments from both sides, the court accepted Laiq’s petition seeking a judicial remand.
The former PDA director general was among those named in a case against the leasing out of a valuable plot in Hayatabad Township without fulfilling all legal requirements. At first, NAB arrested former PDA director Ijaz Afzal Khan and contractor Raz Mohammad Durrani on June 19, 2014. The PDA officials were accused of violating legal formalities and leasing out the land for 33 years at a throwaway price to Durrani, thus causing a loss of Rs75 million to the exchequer.
A NAB statement said it discovered during the course of investigation that the land was leased to Durrani through a non-transparent bidding process. The bureau added the imminent deadline mentioned in the advertisement resulted in only three parties submitting their bids. It said the committee considered two of the bidders ineligible and accepted Durrani’s bid instead of advertising again.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 11th, 2015.
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