Five remanded in Ehtesab Commission’s custody

PESHAWAR: An accountability court on Saturday handed over five persons including the father of a Member Provincial Assembly on 12 days physical remand to the provincial Ehtesab Commission in the scam in which they were accused of grabbing 150 kanal of state land in Kohat district valued at Rs250 million.
Noor Daraz, chief coordination officer in Kohat and father of Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) MPA Gul Sahib Khan, and Mohammad Ghulam, tehsildar in the revenue department, Kamran, a patwari, Daud, a girdawar, and a civilian Taj Mohammad, were produced before the court of accountability judge Hayat Ali Shah.
They had been arrested on Friday from Peshawar, Kohat and Karak under the Ehtesab Act, 2014.
Barrister Qazi Irshad Babar, representing the Ehtesab Commission, demanded physical remand of the accused for interrogation purposes. The court remanded them in the physical custody of the Ehtesab Commission for 12 days.
The arrests were the first to be carried out by the Ehtesab Commission, which was established in October 2014 by the PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to punish all those involved in corruption and misuse of power 2014 onwards. The Ehtesab Commission’s Director General Lt Gen (Retd) Hamid Khan is a former Corps Commander Peshawar.
Noor Daraz, who according to the Ehtesab Commission was the principal beneficiary of the land scam, was arrested from his village in Karak district. He had allegedly used his position as a senior government employee in Kohat to grab the state-owned land in Jarma village with the connivance of the three officials of the revenue department and the civilian, Taj Mohammad, in whose name the properly was transferred.
The arrest of Noor Daraz caused embarrassment and created problems for his son Gul Sahib Khan, the youngest MPA in the province belonging to the PTI. However, PTI supporters maintained that the arrest of the MPA’s father during their party rule showed that the PTI was tough on corruption and was even ready to take action against the close relatives of its own lawmakers.