Ambulances to public buses: Petitioner pleads approval for foreign visit over health issues

Ali Hassan Zardari allegedly converted seven donated ambulances into passenger vehicles

HYDERABAD: The man who allegedly converted seven foreign-donated ambulances into passenger vehicles in Nawabshah has pleaded the court to allow him a foreign visit on health grounds.

This is the second successive plea filed by Ali Hassan Zardari, who is said to be a close aide of Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari, since a team of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) raided his house on June 28.

"I am suffering from hepatitis C," claimed the petitioner in the urgent plea submitted in the Sindh High Court's Hyderabad circuit bench on Thursday. "I have been given an appointment for a medical checkup in London on July 13 and for that I have to reach there by July 12."

The SHC instructed the NAB director-general to submit a reply in the court on July 14. Zardari maintained that NAB has not filed a reference against him so far, despite the raid. Earlier, the SHC granted the petitioner bail after he filed the plea on July 1. The two-week bail till July 14 was given against a surety of Rs1 million.

Zardari allegedly converted seven ambulances, which were given by the foreign donors in 2011 after the flash floods wiped large swathes of Sindh, into passenger vehicles that plied from Nawabshah to Sehwan. The former federal information minister, Firdous Ashif Aiwan, had reportedly handed them over to the district administration during her week-long stay in Nawabshah in September 2011.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2015.