SC adjourns bail plea

Supreme Court adjourns bail application of Mohsin Ayub, who has been in NAB custody for 4 years, without decision.

LAHORE: A three-member bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday adjourned the bail application of property dealer Mohsin Ayub without decision.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has kept Ayub in custody for four years, to investigate the charge that he cheated investors in a commercial venture.

On Wednesday, Ayub’s lawyer told the court that his client had been falsely accused and had been cheated out of the commercial venture, Qasr-e-Zauk on Main Boulevard in Gulberg, by a group of powerful people that included former attorney general Malik Muhammad Qayyum, a former IG, a DSP, a former minister and three senators.

The bench was so angered by the flaws in the investigation of the case that it threatened to have the NAB investigator arrested.

On Thursday, Ayub’s father Sheikh Ayub told the court that the group of powerful people had had him and his son kidnapped and forced them to sign blank papers, which they later used to dispossess them of their family home on Nicholson Road as well as Qasr-e-Zauk.

The latter property was later sold by NAB at half its market price, Sheikh Ayub said, to one of the senators in that group.

Sheikh Ayub began sobbing at the end of his emotional testimony and pleaded for his son’s release. At this point, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry remarked that the court would decide the case on merit and without sentiment. He directed the NAB director general to record Sheikh Ayub’s statement and take action against those behind the scam.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2010.