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WEEKLY
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| Sindh clueless about NRO beneficiaries |
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
By Usman Manzoor
ISLAMABAD: The Sindh government is clueless about the names of thousands of those acquitted of criminal cases under the infamous National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).
Though federal ministers Naveed Qamar and Khursheed Shah have publicly stated that the number of NRO beneficiaries is less than 3,000, and that their lists would soon be made public but the provincial Law Department of Sindh, which is responsible for maintaining the list of NRO beneficiaries, is hazy because all work on the NRO was done before Feb 2007 elections.
Sindh Law Minister Muhammad Ayaz Soomro has no clue of the database of the NRO beneficiaries from Sindh. Ayaz Soomro, when contacted, said that he was not aware of the database of the NRO beneficiaries as it happened before their government. He mentioned that the previous law secretary had to leave the department because of the judicial policy. “I have to check it as I do not have any clue of the issue so far as it happened before our government took over,” he said.
Sources in Islamabad say that apart from the thousands of criminal cases, many corruption cases in other parts of the country were dropped because of clipping the powers of the NAB asking it not to peruse the cases. And the NAB had started cheating the courts by seeking acquittals instead of convictions, deliberately presenting weak prosecution arguments in corruption cases of influential personalities. The sources said that in cases of key rulers, the NAB was asked not to contest the cases against them, and the accountability body did accordingly. The spokesman for the sinking NAB, Ghazni Khan, while denying the bureau’s wilful surrender to high and mighty politicians, said that the NAB has been strictly following the law.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
