Court suspends PPP MPA’s sentence in land fraud case

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday suspended Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) MPA Ali Nawaz Shah’s sentence in a land revenue fraud case. A two-judge bench headed by Justice Ahmed Ali Sheikh ordered releasing on bail Ali Nawaz and two of his relatives who were also convicted by the Karachi accountability court earlier this month.

The SHC observed that according to the accountability court’s September 10 judgment, appellant Ali Nawaz was sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment.

The PPP leader, who was elected to the provincial assembly seat PS-65 (Mirpurkhas-II), was also disqualified from contesting the polls for 10 years. His cousin Khadim Ali Shah and nephew Imtiaz Ali Shah were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment of four years and three years, respectively.

The accountability court had also imposed fines of Rs560,000, Rs540,000 and Rs430,000 on Ali Nawaz, Khadim Ali and Imtiaz Ali, respectively.

“There’s a plethora of court judgments, where short sentences awarded to the appellants were suspended pending appeals,” observed the bench.

The court said that since their appeals are unlikely to be decided in the near future because of a huge backlog of cases, “we allow the listed application, pending appeal, suspend the impugned conviction and sentence awarded by the learned accountability court vide impugned judgment, and order release of appellants on bail subject to their furnishing surety in the sum of Rs500,000 each and PR bond in the like amount to the satisfaction of the Nazir of this court”.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 22^nd,   2015.