Park Lane Estate Company of Zardari, Bilawal: Retired officials get bail from IHC

ISLAMABAD: A senior retired bureaucrat and an-ex revenue official have turned out to be lucky detainees of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) having got bail just one month after their arrest in a case involving the aborted transfer of a piece of land to a company owned by Asif Ali Zardari and his son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has granted post-arrest bail to former member of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) (2010 to 2012) and ex-interior secretary Mian Waheeduddin and former deputy Tehsildar Malik Iqbal.

They were taken into custody by NAB on June 12 and were given bail on July 14 by a two-member bench headed by Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani and comprising Justice Babar Sattar. The judgment has gone unnoticed, unreported.

The accused faced investigations for allegedly wrongly demarcating and transferring over 118 kanals of forest land, situated in Sangjani, to the Park Lane Estate Company (Pvt.) Ltd. The demarcation had been overturned by a CDA judicial forum prior to the initiation of the NAB inquiry and consequently no transfer of land had taken place. The total land of the company is 2,460 kanals & 17 marlas.

As per the details of the case noted in the judgment, authored by Justice Kayani, NAB had received a pseudonymous application from a person whose credentials have not been verified by the NAB authorities. It was against 118 kanals & 14 marlas of the Punjab Forest Department, which was allegedly transferred by the CDA Environment Directorate in connivance with revenue staff of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) through the Park Lane Estate Company (Pvt.) Ltd., which was under lease with the CDA.