Court orders arrests of Durrani’s family members in Rs1.6bn graft case

An accountability court on Saturday issued non-bailable warrants (NBWs) for the arrests of a dozen suspects, including family members of Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani, in a corruption reference pertaining to an amount of Rs1.6 billion, after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) informed the court that the suspects had gone abroad or into hiding to avert arrests.

The accountability court-IV ordered the arrests of Durrani’s wife Naheed, his daughters Sonya, Shahana, Sara and Sanam, son Agha Shahbaz, and six others, including Muhammad Irfan, Gulbahar Baloch, Shakeel Soomro, Syed Muhammad Shah, Ghulam Murtaza and Munawar Ali.

The investigation officer (IO), Asif Raza, told the court that when the bureau checked the suspects’ travel history, it found that the aforementioned members of Durrani’s family had gone to the United States and the United Arab Emirates; whereas, the rest had gone into hiding. He stated that the suspects were issued repeated notices but they did not comply with them.

NAB had filed the reference against Durrani and 19 others, including the absconders, in May this year. The anti-graft watchdog maintained that the Sindh Assembly speaker had accumulated assets beyond his income and could not account for a difference of Rs1,610,669,528 between his declared total income from 1985 to 2018 and the assets in his, his family, dependants and Benamidars’ names. The bureau alleged that Durrani had made such a fortune through kickbacks, embezzlement of public funds and other illegal means.

During the hearing, Durrani was presented by the jail authorities while seven other suspects, including his brother Agha Masihuddin, Zulfiqar Ali Dahar, Gulzar Ahmed, Tufail Ahmed Shaikh, Mitha Khan, Shamshad Khatoon and Aslam Langah, who are on bail, also appeared in the court. They suspects on bail had approached the Sindh High Court before NAB could arrest them.

NAB was scheduled to present a report at the hearing on the summons issued to the absconding suspects. The IO informed the court that repeated attempts had been made to trace the suspects but in vain.

After examining the report, the court issued NBWs against the absconders and ordered their CNICs to be blocked. The court sought a compliance report and adjourned the hearing until October 22.

Talking to journalists on a previous hearing, Durrani had said that he had been content with the life in jail because he had been to prisons on and off in the past 30 years. “I am not afraid. I sleep on the floor and have been to almost all places good and bad [in jail]. I have been coming here for the past 30 years. And now I am used to it.”

Durrani was arrested by NAB in February at a hotel in Islamabad. He is currently under judicial custody and his office at the Sindh Assembly has been declared sub-jail. Earlier he was interned in Landhi jail.