Paramilitary action: Another SSGC official arrested by Rangers

The CFO of the Sui Southern Gas Company was picked up for a 90-day detention

KARACHI: The Rangers informed an anti-terrorism court on Monday about the 90-day preventive detention of another top official of the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) on charges of facilitating terrorism.

The chief financial officer of the gas utility, Amin Rajput, was reportedly picked up by law enforcement agencies on Friday evening from outside the SSGC building as he left the premises.

He remained missing as no agency owned up to his arrest despite witnesses' claims of seeing men in plain cloths and Rangers personnel taking him away.

Read: SSGC CFO Amin Rajput detained by law enforcement agencies

Two days later, however, the Rangers presented him before the ATC-III judge, Saleem Raza Baloch, thus, claiming his arrest. The paramilitary force submitted before the judge that the suspect was involved in the embezzlement of funds and supported terrorism with the misappropriated money.

Paramilitary officials submitted to the court the detention order and jail warrants for the suspect and took him away.

The suspect has been detained under Section 11EEEE of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows the armed and civil armed forces of the country to take into custody any person whom they suspect to be involved in terror acts for a period of three months.

Rajput' arrest has come soon after three of his colleagues — Shoaib Warsi, Zuhair Siddiqi and Kamran — were apprehended by the Rangers in the same manner.

The swoop in on the top bureaucratic circle of the energy company coincides with the arrest of Dr Asim Hussain, former minister of petroleum and close aide of Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1st, 2015.