SSGC deputy chief arrested as efforts pick up pace

Karachi
A day after General Raheel Sharif’s latest visit to the city, anti-corruption efforts seemed to be the order of the day for law enforcers as two high-profile arrests took place on Wednesday.
In a raid at the offices of the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC), officials took away its deputy managing director, Shoaib Warsi, for questioning.
According to sources, Warsi was arrested from outside his Civic Centre office and has been shifted to an undisclosed location for interrogation. His detention came hours after authorities arrested Dr Asim Hussain, a former petroleum minister and current head of the Higher Education Commission’s Sindh chapter, from a meeting at the HEC’s Karachi office.
Dr Asim is a close friend of former president Asif Ali Zardari and, though his arrest was the more high-profile of the two, there were reports that both detentions were linked.
However, a SSGC official came out with a statement soon after Warsi’s arrest which rejected any possibility of the deputy MD’s involvement in Dr Asim’s affairs. The statement reiterated the SSGC’s desire to extend complete cooperation to law enforcers and relayed the management’s surprise over the manner of Warsi’s arrest.

CS obtains pre-arrest bail
The Sindh chief secretary obtained interim pre-arrest bail from the high court on Wednesday in connection with a National Accountability Bureau inquiry into the regularisation of six acres in Scheme 33, Karachi.
The court, however, directed Mohammad Siddique Memon to cooperate with the investigators
The province’s top civil servant had responded to a call-up notice issued by NAB on the allotment and regularisation of six acres in Sector 52-A Corridor, Scheme 33 for residential and commercial purposes.
The petitioner’s counsel, barrister Zamir Ghumro, submitted that NAB had taken notice of the regularisation of the land and its allotment to Mohammad Ayub.
He added that the allotment was cancelled, but later on Ayub’s application, the land was regularised in January 2008 and re-allotted by a committee headed by a retired judge of the high court.
He submitted that the petitioner had no connection with the original allotment nor was he a member of the lands committee which had regularised the land as he was posted as the land utilisation department secretary after that.
Besides, he added, the petitioner was not a beneficiary of allotment.
He submitted that NAB was aware about the regularisation process as two army officers of the station headquarters and 5 corps too were members of the committee along with representatives of the finance and land utilisation departments. The process was completed after examining and clarifying all relevant records.
The counsel mentioned in the petition that the call-up notice showed that the competent authority had taken notice of the alleged offence without bothering to record the statement of the petitioner.
He said this fact was sufficient to demonstrate hat the impugned notice was tainted and issued in pursuant of the recent campaign against Sindh’s civil servants.
The court was prayed to set aside the call-up notice issued by NAB and grant pre-arrest bail to the petitioner.
An SHC division bench, headed by Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh, after the preliminary hearing of the case issued notices to the NAB deputy prosecutor general, deputy attorney general and others for September 9.
The court, without touching the merit of the case, also granted interim pre-arrest bail to the chief secretary subject to a surety of Rs500,000.