PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday asked six current and former senior police officers to respond to a National Accountability Bureau petition against an accountability court’s decision not to summon them for indictment in the famous weapon purchase corruption case.

The responses were sought by a bench comprising Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Syed Afsar Shah through separate notices after preliminary hearing into the case.

NAB prosecutor Azeem Dad said on Nov 24, an accountability court had dismissed an application of the bureau and had stuck to its earlier decision of not summoning the six policemen.

He said the accountability judge had overstepped his powers by not summoning the officers, who were named in the NAB reference.

The policemen named in the reference but not summoned by the court are ex-commandant of Frontier Constabulary (FC) Abdul Majeed Marwat, ex-additional IGP (operation) Abdul Latif Ghandapur, DIG at Central Police Office Sajid Ali Khan, ex-DIG (headquarters) of Peshawar Mohammad Salman, then AIG (establishment) at CPO Kashif Alam and then DIG (telecommunications) Sadiq Kamal Orakzai.

Asks suspects to reply to NAB plea against their non-summoning

In March this year, the court had declined to summon them citing the NAB failure to explain their offence as a major reason.

It had observed that the position of the suspects had yet to be spelled out and construed by the NAB in line with the law and under relevant provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The court had observed that NAB had so far failed to produce ‘convincing and solid’ reasons for not arresting the six suspects and that whenever any convincing reason was given, the court would summon them in the case.

NAB prosecutor Azeem Dad insisted that after the bureau had named six policemen as suspects, the court had no powers to decline their summoning for trial.

He added that trial court could either acquit or convict a suspect.

The prosecutor said role of the police officers in the scam were clearly spelled out in the reference and that they had played important role in the case as they were members of different committees including purchase committee.

In the case, NAB had arrested four people, including former provincial police officer Malik Naveed Khan, budget officer of police Jawed Khan, ex-chief minister Ameer Haider Hoti’s brother Ameer Ghazan Khan and Ghazan’s brother-in-law Raza Ali.

The NAB, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, had filed the reference against 10 people on March 18 under the NAB Ordinance, 1999 charging them with corruption.

It alleged that the eight police officials named in the reference were in league with each other and had grossly violated the provision of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Procurement of Goods, Works and Services Rules 2003 to extend unwarranted favour to the approver in the case, Arshad Majeed, a private contractor, during the award of Rs5.7 billion weapons contracts.

The NAB insisted that the loss to the kitty had been assessed at Rs2.03 billion.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2014