No more questions: NAB restrained from investigation against pharma CEO

Iftikhar was wanted in scam involving supply of spurious hepatitis C vaccine.

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court restrained the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa National Accountability Bureau from carrying out an investigation against the chief executive officer for Pharmedic Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company based in Lahore. CEO Iftikhar Ahmad Sheikh was being investigated in a scam involving the supply of spurious interferon injections, a vaccine for hepatitis C, to hospitals in K-P.

Around Rs250 million worth of interferon vials in question were supplied to state-run hospitals in the province.

The order was issued on Monday by the division bench of Justice Roohul Amin Khan and Justice Muhammad Daud Khan. On February 6, 2013, former chief justice Dost Muhammad Khan issued a suo motu notice of spurious interferon injections being supplied to hospitals.



Later, the anti-corruption establishment arrested the then director general Dr Sharif Ahmad Khan, Project Director Ghulam Subhani and Dr Muhammad Ali Chohan, the then director of purchase committee.

In October that year, the high court ordered the director general of NAB to form a high-level committee of investigators and start an enquiry against government officials and pharmaceutical companies involved in the interferon injection scam.

Ghulam Mohiduddin Malik, the counsel for Iftikhar, told the bench his client was served a call-up notice to appear before a team of NAB in the aforementioned scam, even though the Supreme Court had stopped the high court from issuing any suo motu notice.

Malik said the order of the high court was challenged in the apex court, which ruled that the former cannot ask NAB to conduct an enquiry. Despite a clear order of the apex court, his client was served the notice to appear for an enquiry, which is illegal.

The court then suspended the notice and restrained NAB from further proceedings against Iftikhar.

The court also ordered to combine this case’s petitions with others as three officials have pleaded similar grievances before the court. The cases will jointly be heard on September 15.

The pharmaceutical company also approached the PHC to quash the FIR filed against it in the same case. The company leaders want the FIR to be declared null and void so that it could start supplying interferon to K-P. A hearing at the high court will be scheduled soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th,  2015.