KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Monday granted bail to a former provincial information secretary and his three subordinates in an alleged corruption reference in awarding advertisements to the electronic media.

The two-judge SHC bench headed by Justice K.K. Agha granted bail against a surety bond of Rs1 million each to then information secretary Zulfiqar Ali Shalwani, deputy director Mohammad Yousuf Kaboro, information officer Sarang Latif and section officer Altaf Memon.

The bench also directed the federal interior secretary to immediately place the names of the applicants on the Exit Control List.

The then information minister, Sharjeel Inam Memon, who had already obtained bail, then information secretary Shalwani, some deputy directors and other officials of the information department and others have been facing trial before an accountability court for allegedly committing corruption from 2013 to 2015 in awarding advertisements of the provincial government’s awareness campaigns in the electronic media, causing a loss of around Rs3.27 billion to the treasury.

Wants names of applicants put on ECL

Through their lawyer Shaukat Hayat, the applicants moved the SHC and argued that they had been behind bars for around two years and the trial court had only examined 16 prosecution witnesses out of 52.

The counsel further contended that it was the case of further inquiry since the federal government through a letter issued in December fixed the rates of advertisements for all the government departments. He also informed the bench that the SHC had already granted bail to the former information minister in the present case.

A prosecutor of the National Accountability Bureau opposed the bail applications and argued that the applicants had processed and approved the invoices and the apex court had already dismissed their bail.

The SHC had granted bail to Sharjeel Memon in June this year in the present case and asked the federal interior ministry to place his name on the ECL.

The bench in its order had observed that apart from being a case of further inquiry, there was a delay in conclusion of the trial, which was unlikely to be completed in the foreseeable future.

NAB had filed the reference in 2016 and the former information minister with 11 others had landed in prison in October 2017 after a division bench of the SHC dismissed their interim pre-arrest bails.

Conviction suspended

Another division bench of the SHC on Monday suspended the conviction order of a trial court against some former jail officials and granted them bail.

The then superintendents of Central Prison Karachi, Ghulam Murtaza Shaikh, Faheem Memon, Ghulam Murtaza Shaikh and another jail official, Rafiq Channa, filed appeals in the SHC after an antiterrorism court had sentenced them and others to two-year imprisonment as the trial court found them guilty of negligence following the escape of two suspected militants — Shaikh Mumtaz alias Firaun alias Sher Khan and Mohammad Ahmed Khan alias Munna, said to be associated with the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi — from the central prison in June 2017.

The two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro suspended the conviction order and granted bail to the appellants against a surety bond of Rs200,000 each.

The bench also issued notices to the prosecution for next hearing.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2019