LAHORE: An accountability court on Friday denied the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) further custody of Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz in Ramzan Sugar Mills reference.

The NAB produced Hamza before the court and his father, Leader of Opposition in National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif, who is on bail in the reference, also attended the proceedings. Strict security measures had been taken by the police outside the court.

Submitting an application for extension in physical remand of Hamza, NAB special prosecutor Waris Ali Janjua stated before the court that the suspect had not been cooperating with the interrogators. He said some other suspects summoned by the bureau, including project director Javed Iqbal, were yet to join investigation.

He said then chief minister Shahbaz Sharif approved construction of a drain in Chiniot with a cost of Rs360 million only to benefit Ramzan Sugar Mills owned by his sons, Hamza and Salman.

He said the approval for the construction was given on a fake application filed by then MPA Maulana Rehmatullah to paint the drain as public project. The prosecutor said public funds were misused for the benefit of family business of the suspects.

Representing Shahbaz and Hamza, Advocate Amjad Pervez argued that the NAB had not precisely determined the role of both father and the son. He pointed out that two of the persons summoned by the NAB in the case had already died.

He said the MPA who asked the then chief minister for the construction of the drain had never met Hamza. He rejected the argument of the prosecutor that project director Javed Iqbal had not been cooperating in the investigation. He said Iqbal appeared before the bureau whenever he was summoned.

The counsel argued that the NAB was seeking further remand on the same old grounds. He said the bureau based its case on documents, which it already possessed. He said there were no justification for further remand as charges had already been framed and testimony of prosecution witnesses was in progress.

Meanwhile, Mr Sharif sought permission from the court to quickly narrate some facts in his defence, which was granted.

“I will talk about Ramzan Sugar Mills only without going into details of other projects and wasting court’s time,” he said.

Mr Sharif accused the NAB of resorting to his character assassination and offered himself for exemplary punishment if found guilty.

He pointed out that during his stint as Punjab chief minister he had turned down a request of the Sindh government and refused to decrease the price of sugarcane. He said by doing so the sugar mills of his sons suffered a loss of over Rs3 billion.

The prosecutor raised an objection saying Mr Sharif was talking about irrelevant issues and neither was he recording his statement.

Presiding Judge Naeem Arshad dismissed the application of the NAB and sent Hamza to jail on judicial remand.

The hearing was adjourned till July 20.

Despite being sent on judicial remand, Hamza will remain in the NAB custody due to physical remand in another case of money laundering/assets beyond means.

In a brief conversation with the media, Hamza said termed the arrest of PML-N Punjab President Rana Sanaullah the worst kind of political victimisation. He lamented that the tradition of implicating political rivals in fake cases like buffalo theft and possessing drugs was still in vogue despite the lapse of 72 years.

He said the arrest of Rana Sanaullah was a joke with the nation. He said the government gave people nothing except the storm of inflation and unemployment.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2019