Arts Council office-bearers granted pre-arrest bail

KARACHI:

The Sindh High Court (SHC) granted on Monday protective bail to three top office-bearers of the Arts Council of Pakistan, restricting the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) from arresting them.

The SHC division bench, comprising Justice Ahmed Ali Sheikh and Justice Sadiq Hussain Bhatti, heard the application moved by the incumbent president of the Arts Council, Professor Ejaz Ahmed Faruqi, its secretary Muhammad Ahmed Shah and its executive director, Nadeem Zafar Siddiqi, against NAB.

They pleaded that NAB, which is a federal institution, was conducting an inquiry against them over allegations of embezzlement in funds at the organisation. The allegations against them are false and baseless and are leveled by their political rivals with mala fide intentions and ulterior motives, the bail application read, without naming the opponents.

However, the lawyer representing them told the court that those who had made the false complaints to NAB were members of the rival panel that had lost to his clients in the recent elections.

The application further read that neither is the Arts Council a government institution, nor are its governing members public servants. The council does not even run on public fund, thus, NAB had no jurisdiction to conduct an inquiry there, the petitioners claimed.

The three petitioners contended that they had recently received a notice from the accountability bureau, summoning them for interrogation over the alleged embezzlement of funds and they feared that they might be arrested.

The division bench, after listening to the arguments of the petitioners' counsels, granted them a pre-arrest bail against a surety bond of Rs500,000 for each and issued notices to NAB, seeking its response by the next hearing in September. The three officials have also been asked to stay within the country in the meantime.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 11^th, 2015.