KP govt proposes amendment to Ehtesab Act to provide legal cover to judicial custody

PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led provincial government has proposed amendment to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Act 2014 to provide legal cover to judicial custody of the accused persons and stop the release of suspects held on charges of corruption.
As per the final amended draft bill tabled in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, legal cover has been given to judicial custody by making Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) applicable to the proposed KP Ehtesab Commission (Amendment) Act 2015.
The framers of this law had included Section 38 to the act, which provides mechanism for remanding a suspect into the custody of the Ehtesab Commission, but no provision was made part of it for sending a suspect to judicial lock-up/prison after completion of the physical remand.
Prima facie, keeping a suspect in prison by the Ehtesab court is an illegal practice and this goes in support of an arrested suspect.
Certain key suspects, including Pakistan People’s Party’s former provincial minister Liaqat Shabab, chief coordinating officer of Kohat district council Noor Daraz Khattak, who is father of PTI MPA Gul Sahib Khan, the owner of Iqra National University, Obaidur Rehman, an additional secretary of Finance Department, Imtiaz Ayub, and others got benefit of this legal flaw in the act and won interim bails from the PHC.
However, after amendment to the act, getting bail from the high court would be difficult for the detained PTI former minister Ziaullah Afridi and others as the judicial custody would get legal cover.
The Ehtesab Commission, which began functioning late last year, made the first arrests on April 17 when it apprehended five persons, including Noor Daraz Khattak, on the charges of grabbing government land valued at Rs250 million. The other four suspects were: tehsildar Mohammad Ghulam, patwari Kamran, girdawar Daud Khan and a civilian beneficiary of the scam Taj Mohammad.
The Additional Advocate General, Qaiser Ali Shah is of the view that after removing the legal flaws from the act, the accused persons would face difficulty in getting interim bail from the high court and the Supreme Court.