PHC again restrains NAB from arresting police officers

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Monday extended the stay order restraining the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from arresting five serving and one retired police officers in a high-profile case of embezzlement of funds in weapons procurement for the Police Department.
A division bench comprising Justice Musarrat Hilali and Justice Muhammad Younas Thaheem extended the stay order till the next hearing into the case.
The court directed the NAB Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to submit written comments in the court before the next hearing about the arrest of the petitioners.
The six police officers, including former Frontier Constabulary commandant Abdul Majeed Marwat, former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Additional Inspector General of Police (Operations) Abdul Latif Gandapur, Deputy Inspector General of Police at Central Police Office, Sajid Ali Khan, former Deputy Inspector General of Police (Headquarters) Peshawar Mohammad Suliman, former Additional Inspector General of Police (Establishment) at Central Police Office Kashif Alam and former Deputy Inspector General of Police (Telecommunications) Sadiq Kamal Orakzai had filed the petition.
The petitioners were seeking restraining order from the court about their arrest by the NAB in the multi-billion weapons purchase scam in the Police Department.
A team of lawyers, including Abdus Samad Khan, Aamir Javed, Mudassir Ameer and Anwarul Haq, appeared for the petitioners and submitted that despite the decision of the accountability and superior courts rejecting the NAB plea for summoning the petitioners in the weapons scam, the NAB issued notice to them to appear before it. They informed the bench that the PHC had dismissed the review petition of the NAB in June this year and upheld its earlier order about the non-summoning of one retired and five serving police officers by an accountability court for indictment in a high-profile case of embezzlement of funds in weapons procurement for their department.
It was pointed out that the some days ago the Supreme Court also dismissed the appeal of NAB against the decision of the PHC.
In March 2014, an accountability court declined to summon the six police officers citing the NAB’s failure to explain their offence as a major reason.
Subsequently, the accountability court dismissed an application of the NAB on November 24, 2014 and retained its earlier decision of not summoning the six officials.
Upset by those orders of the accountability court, the NAB filed the earlier writ petition, saying the trial court had erred by not summoning the six officers to stand the trial as they were members of the purchase committee that had awarded lucrative contracts to a private contractor Arshad Majeed, who later turned an approver.