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Thursday March 28, 2024

Five SC judges to approve JIT members

By Tariq Butt
April 24, 2017

ISLAMABAD: The five judges, who decided the Panama case, will “nominate and approve” the members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) with the exclusion of any executive authority.

The names proposed by the six key departments and institutions for induction in the JIT will be mere recommendations to which the five-member bench may agree or disagree. This is the only job left for this panel after handing down its decisions.

The unanimous Order of the Court, signed by all the consenting and dissenting judges, which appeared at the end of the majority and minority verdicts, said that the “Heads” of these “departments/institutions shall recommend the names of their nominees for the JIT within seven days from today” [April 20] “which shall be placed before us in chambers for nomination and approval.”

Thus, the job of the chiefs of the identified departments and institutions was just to make recommendations while the “nomination and approval” would be done by the bench itself. The Order said that in normal circumstances, such exercise (investigation) could be conducted by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) but when its Chairman appears to be indifferent and even unwilling to perform his part, “we are constrained to look elsewhere and therefore, constitute a” JIT, comprising six members.

They will include a senior officer of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), not below the rank of Additional Director General, who shall head the team having firsthand experience of investigation of white collar crime and related matters; a representative of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB); a nominee of the Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) familiar with the issues of money laundering and white collar crimes; a nominee of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP); and one seasoned officer each of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) nominated by their directors generals.

This is not the first time that the Supreme Court will directly “nominate and approve” the members of the JIT. The apex court had in 2012 ordered recalling senior FIA official Hussain Asghar to work as the head of a team to resume investigation into the famous Haj corruption case after he had been removed by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government from probing this scandal.

The apex court had directed the FIA chief to hand over the charge of the Haj scam investigation to Hussain Asghar, whose suspension had earlier been ordered by it for “defying” its order not to continue this investigation. The FIA chief had informed the court that Hussain Asghar and another officer Javed Bukhari had asked to be disassociated from this investigation. The government was directed to cancel their transfer orders and reappoint them in the FIA to enable them to proceed with the investigation into the Haj scandal.

On another occasion, the Supreme Court had picked up respected retired police official and former FIA chief Tariq Khosa to head a one-man commission to probe the memo scandal but he had refused to accept the assignment as the PPP had raised serious objections to his nomination. Its leader Babar Awan had questioned Khosa’s selection saying that he was a brother of Punjab Chief Secretary Nasir Mehmood Khosa and a Supreme Court judge.

Earlier, he had been removed as the FIA director general when he had declined to bow before the pressure of the government and his interior ministry bosses while investigating mega corruption scandal of Pakistan Steel Mills. Previously, Tariq Khosa had also investigated Mumbai attacks case and notorious human trafficking case.

Even after the apex court had recommended his name as the head of the commission to probe the Bank of Punjab scam, the PPP government had refused to notify him on the plea that he could not be relieved owing to his official duties as the federal secretary of the Narcotics Division.

The Supreme Court has frequently constituted judicial commissions that had inquired into different contentious matters. The latest famous commission was the one led by Nasirul Mulk as the chief justice of Pakistan that had inquired into the allegations of rigging in the 2013 general elections leveled by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan and other political parties. It is up to the apex court to form a JIT keeping in view the nature of the matter before it.