KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday confirmed the interim pre-arrest bail of former provincial minister Sharjeel Memon and others in a corruption reference and directed the authorities to place their names on the exit control list (ECL).

The two-judge bench headed by Justice K.K. Agha said the reasons for confirmation of the bail would be recorded later and asked the former minister to deposit an additional surety bond of Rs4 million. It also confirmed the interim bail of five other suspects.

The bench also granted interim pre-arrest bail to the wife of former minister, Sadaf Sharjeel, and mother, Zeenat Inam Memon, against a surety bond of Rs1m each.

It allowed the post-arrest bail of Izhar Hussain, former private secretary of Mr Memon, and a foreign exchange company employee, Mohammad Sohail, against a surety of Rs200,000 each.

However, the bench directed the secretary of the ministry of interior to place the names of all the suspects on the ECL.

Interim pre-arrest bail to all accused confirmed

Initially, the SHC had granted interim bail to the former minister in June last year against a surety bond of Rs1m in the second reference filed against him regarding assets beyond his known sources of income and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had also named his wife and mother, and others as accused in the reference.

On Wednesday, the bench pronounced its order on bail applications of Memon and others after hearing arguments from both sides.

A NAB investigating officer (IO) informed the bench that the former minister had allegedly accumulated illegal assets of around Rs2.4 billion and got the properties registered in the names of his family members and various other people.

The IO further maintained that during the investigations, the properties of Memon worth Rs160m only had been verified and the remaining properties/assets were allegedly found to be illegal, adding that they also had properties in Dubai.

The members of the bench came down hard on the IO as he remained unable to give satisfactory reply to several questions asked by them and also expressed displeasure for not producing original documents of the properties in question despite the direction issued on Tuesday.

The NAB had filed the second reference last year against the former Sindh minister, his mother, wife and nine others, including his former private secretary for allegedly accumulating assets worth Rs2.27bn beyond their known sources of income.

It had filed the first reference in 2016 before an accountability court against the former minister, then provincial information secretary Zulfiqar Ali Shallwani, other officials of the information department and private persons for allegedly committing corruption from 2013 to 2015 in awarding advertisements of provincial government’s awareness campaigns to electronic media that caused a loss of around Rs3.27bn.

Free treatment for senior citizens

Another divisional bench of the SHC on Wednesday summoned the secretary of the social welfare department for Sept 15 on a petition to provide concession to senior citizens for treatment at private hospitals.

The Legal Aid Society moved the SHC and submitted that all the private hospitals and medical centres were bound to provide 25 per cent concession to senior citizens under the Sindh Senior Citizens Welfare Act, 2014.

When the two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar took up the petition for hearing, the lawyers for the private hospitals submitted that they could not provide concession without Azadi cards to be issued by the department concerned.

Keenjhar Lake incident

The same bench on Wednesday summoned the Thatta deputy commissioner (DC) and senior superintendent of police (SSP) with direction to appear on Aug 27 on a petition regarding 10 people’s drowning in Keenjhar Lake. The bench also sought a report regarding standard operating procedures (SOPs) as well as a progress report about the investigation of the incident.

Petitioner advocate Nadeem Shaikh informed the bench that after an identical incident in 2017, the court had issued direction to evolve SOPs regarding boats.

He contended that there was no mechanism/policy for boats as they were packed to capacity and there were no safety gears. He sought action against the DC, SSP and other officials for their alleged negligence.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2020