PHC restrains commission from arresting patwari in land case

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday restrained Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission from arrest of a patwari, Abdul Waheed, for his alleged involvement in the land grabbing case of over 150 kanals of government property worth Rs250 million in Jarma village in Kohat.
A two-member bench comprising Justice Nisar Hussain Khan and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth issued the restraining order. The bench asked the director general Ehtesab Commission to submit reply in the case.
The petitioner’s lawyer Sahibzada Asadullah submitted before the bench that both the Anti-Corruption Department and assistant commissioner Kohat had already registered first information reports regarding the scam.
He said the high court had granted bail to the petitioner in the FIR lodged by the Anti-Corruption Department and an appeal had been filed in the Supreme Court for quashment of FIR, which is pending.
In the meanwhile, he said the Ehtesab Commission also issued warrant for arrest of the petitioner. However, he said that in one case, three departments had taken cognizance of offence, which was unlawful.
He said the arrest warrant of the Ehtesab Commission is illegal and thus it should be stopped from the arrest. After preliminary hearing, the bench stopped the commission from arrest of the petitioner and issued a notice to director general Ehtesab Commission to submit reply before next hearing.
The commission had already arrested Noor Daraz Khattak, a government employee working as chief coordination officer in Kohat, and the father of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Member Provincial Assembly Gul Sahib Khan, Muhammad Ghulam, a tehsildar in the Revenue Department, Kamran and Daud who are patwari and girdawar in the same department, and a civilian Taj Mohammad in the same case. All the accused are on interim bail from the high court.