Three convicted for defrauding Benazir Bhutto’s cousin

An anti-corruption court has sentenced three people, including a woman, to imprisonment after they were found guilty of defrauding a cousin of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to acquire his properties.

The Special Anti-Corruption court –I judge convicted Abdul Aziz Rahim, Sheikh Majid Javed and Nasreen Begum for illegally transferring properties of Tariq Islam, a paternal cousin of Bhutto, in Clifton in their names using forged documents.

Islam had lodged a complaint with the Federal Investigation Agency in August 2019 that the abovementioned persons and others, including Ghulam Farooq Channa, Syed Sadaf Amjad, Nida Zehra, Feroz and Muhammad Iqbal, were trying to transfer his properties to them by tampering with the land record and using forged documents.

He had added that accused had also filed a lawsuit in the Sindh High Court against him and his parents to claim his ancestral properties by establishing a false relationship with his family. During the trial, Begum also confessed to having signed documents in the claim of the land on the pursuance of Feroz and Iqbal, who have died. She told that her father’s name was Islam-ud-Din but Iqbal had raised her and had promised to give her the properties.

She said that the two took her to the SHC to file a petition in the claim of the properties and to an office of the National Database Registration Authority for the issuance of her new CNIC as well as to a bank for the opening an account in her name.

Former SSP Farooq Awan also testified during the trial that he had attested the image form of Iqbal in 2016 on the instance of Rahim, who brought Iqbal along with the death certificate of Naseem Begum Chotani. He added that he verified the data of Iqbal from the Nadra link.

Pronouncing the verdict, the judge remarked that Rahim facilitated the scheme of Iqbal and Begum to show themselves as legal heirs of the Chotani family in order to get administration of the properties.

The judge awarded imprisonment of four years to Begum, three-and-a-half years to Javed and three years to Rahim after they were found colluding with each other to transfer the properties.

The court acquitted Channa and Amjad for lack of evidence, and it kept the case on dormant against Zehra and Feroz until their arrest or surrender. Meanwhile, the court dismissed applications by Rahim and Javed seeking condone for their absence on the account of the coronavirus. The judge also issued non-bailable warrants for the arrest of both the convicts through the investigating officer of the case, who was directed to arrest and produce them before the court so that they could be sent to the prison to serve out their sentences.

The FIR was registered under the sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 109 (abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with the Section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act-II at the FIA Anti-Human Trafficking Circle.