Corruption charges: KMC official remanded, custody of another seven extended

KARACHI:

A judicial magistrate extended on Friday the physical remand of seven suspects, including four directors of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), while remanding a newly arrested official to the custody of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in a fraud case.

The FIA had arrested KMC education director Mansoor Mirza, his predecessor Muhammad Amin, deputy director Raziuddin, assistant director Muhammad Mazhar, clerks Hassan Ahmed and Naveed James, and bank officer Aleem Qadri, on June 17 on allegations of fraudulently embezzling millions of rupees through the salaries of ghost and fake employees. Since then, they were in the custody of FIA. At the end of their remand, the seven suspects along with the newly arrested KMC additional education director, Saleem Shah, were produced before the before the court.

The investigating officer of the case sought the custody of the new suspect for questioning and also asked the court to extend the remand of the other suspects. Malir district judicial magistrate Mohammad Ali Memon, after examining the documents submitted to the court, handed over the newly arrested suspect to FIA on a one-day physical remand and also granted extension in the remand of the remaining suspects till June 27.

The case was registered under sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant or by banker, merchant or agent), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code, read with section 5 (II) of the Prevention of Corruption Act-II, at the FIA Commercial Bank Circle, Karachi.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 27^th, 2015.