PPP demands release of Khursheed Shah

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People’s Party has deplored and condemned the continued incarceration of PPP leader and former opposition leader in the National Assembly, Syed Khursheed Shah, for the past over a year on "trumped up charges" that NAB has failed to prove in any court of law.

The PPPP leader called upon all human rights organisations and everyone with a conscience to protest against the blatant political victimization of Syed Khursheed Shah and demanded his immediate release. In a statement on Thursday, Secretary General of the PPP Parliamentarians, ex-Senator Farhatullah Babar, claimed the charges against Khursheed Shah were comical. “In any civilized and law abiding society, such charges will be thrown out of the window and those bringing up such ridiculous and frivolous charges will instead be prosecuted,” he said.

He said this is a unique case of abuse of judicial process. Shah claims to own a piece of land, which he lawfully purchased from the sellers and has produced documents to back his claim. He said even the sellers of the property are not staking any claim over the land having already sold it to Shah.

“Neither anyone has complained that his or her land has been unjustly appropriated by the PPP leader. Yet NAB insists that the land does not belong to him without any evidence,” he said.

Babar claimed Syed Khursheed Shah never even used the perks of office. When he was the opposition leader, he did not claim any medical expenses, nor the usual sumptuary allowance. Similarly, he did not perform Haj at state expense despite being Minister for Religious Affairs. He said it is most unfortunate that accountability in Pakistan has been weaponized to crush the political dissent and for political re-engineering, more so under the present dispensation in which the chairman NAB has allowed the organization to play second fiddle to the selected government.

“Never before the accountability has been made into such a farce as by the NAB under its present leadership, which has willingly allowed itself to become a veritable arm of the powers that be for political manipulations and re-engineering,” he said.