KARACHI: Sindh High Court Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M. Sheikh on Monday urged lawyers to take due interest in public interest litigation and approach the court through proper process to apprise it of public-related issues in their respective areas.

He was speaking to lawyers after inauguration of new office of the Sindh Bar Council on the SHC premises.

The chief justice said he received a number of complaints regarding severe problems faced by the people in the interior of the province. “But no one is coming ahead with the pleas in the court.”

He said: “After seeing the hospitals’ dilapidated condition, I feel very sorry for the people but unfortunately, no one ever approached the court.”

Chief Justice Shaikh asked the lawyers that how many of them had approached the court against hospitals’ dilapidated condition, adding that his doors were always open for everyone who wanted betterment of the people of the province.

He said he had also visited the prison and observed that many prisoners were languishing there.

The CJ also said that he had also met AIDs patients during his visits to the prison.

He thanked the SBC for inviting him in the inauguration ceremony which was also attended by SBC vice chairman Qurban Ali Malano, executive committee’s chairman Abdul Wahab Baloch and Pakistan Judicial Commission’s Noor Naz Agha in the SHC premises.

Sharjeel’s bail case

A division bench of the high court directed the National Accountability Bureau to file its comments on post-arrest bail plea of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader and former provincial minister Sharjeel Inam Memon in Rs5.76 billion corruption case.

Sharjeel, along with the officials of a private advertising agency Inam Akbar, Riaz Munir, Muhammad Hanif, Asim Amir Khan Sikandar and others was booked by the corruption watchdog for causing billions of rupees loss to the national exchequer through ‘embezzling’ in the Sindh information department’s electronic campaign.

The former minister, who was arrested by the NAB after the SHC had revoked his interim pre-arrest bail on Oct 23 last year, approached the court through his counsel Sardar Latif Khosa and sought bail after arrest.

The counsel told the judges that the former minister was suffering from disease but had not been provided due medical facilities in the prison.

The bench issued notice to the NAB’s prosecutor and others and put off the hearing to Jan 10.

According to NAB, the PPP lawmaker and 17 others, in connivance with each other, had caused Rs5.76 billion loss to the national exchequer through the embezzlement in the Sindh government’s advertisement campaign on electronic media.

The bureau said in its reference filed in the Accountability Court that the investigation was conducted regarding corruption and corrupt practices in the advertisement awareness campaigns on TV and FM channels between July 2013 and June 2015 and it was found that the accused acted in connivance with each other resulting in loss to the national exchequer.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2018