NAB arrests serving, former VCs on graft charges

PESHAWAR: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday arrested one serving and a former vice-chancellor as well as other officials for misuse of authority.
An official said Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, Vice Chancellor Dr Ihsan Ali, former vice-chancellor of
Hazara University Dr Syed Sakhawat Shah, Dr Muhammad Aziz Khan who is Chairman National Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) College of Medicine Abbottabad
and Prof Humayun Zia, former chairman Higher Education Regulatory Authority (HERA) were arrested from the
NAB regional office in Peshawar.
Dr Ihsan Ali had served as vice-chancellor of Hazara University before becoming the vice-chancellor of Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan. Dr Aziz was the owner of NIMS in Abbottaabad.
“All the arrests of the serving and former officials were made from the NAB regional office as they were summoned and then arrested after showing them enough material justifying their arrest,” said the official.
He said four more officials would likely be arrested in the same case as they didn’t comply with the NAB notice served to them to appear at its office.
As per the NAB communiqué, the accused were involved in misuse of authority and cheating public at large by luring students to get admission in an illegal and unregistered medical institution depriving their parents of more than Rs550 million.
The communiqué said: “During the course of inquiry/investigation, it came to surface that Dr Ihsan Ali and Dr Sakhawat Shah without any medical faculty/mandate as provided in the Khyber Medical University Act
2006 granted affiliation to NIMS Abbottabad with ulterior motives and conducted examination of an illegal medical institute.”
It said the accused abetted with the illegal medical college and deprived parents of their hard-earned money. The statement said that the accused played with the future of the students by wasting their precious time and causing loss to the future leaders of Pakistan.
The NAB claimed that the probe revealed that the accused Dr Muhammad Aziz Khan, chairman of the illegal medical institution of NIMS, willfully indulged in illegal business for monetary gains by admitting students without any lawful mandate prior to recognition of the institute as envisaged in PMDC Ordinance, 1962 and the apex court’s judgment 2007.
The NAB communiqué stated that the accused Humayun Zia, former chairman HERA, with the connivance of others illegally registered NIMS by overlooking the criteria for registration of medical colleges and also failed to pay periodic regulatory visits to NIMS.
An official said the NAB Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was aggressively looking into the matters because it was not only a matter of financial loss, but the future of the nation was at stake.
It said the accused would be produced before the accountability court for physical custody today.