ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has condemned the continued incarceration of party MNA Syed Khursheed Shah for the past over one year on what the party called “trumped-up charges that National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has not been able to prove in any court of law”.

The PPP urged all human rights organisations and anyone with a conscience to protest against “blatant political victimisation” of Mr Shah and called for his immediate release.

In a statement issued here on Thursday, PPP secretary general Farhatullah Babar said that charges against Mr Shah were “laughable”.

“In any civilised and law-abiding society such charges will be thrown out immediately and those bringing up such ridiculous and frivolous charges will be prosecuted,” Mr Babar said, terming the issue “a unique case of abuse of judicial processes”.

Probe demanded into delay in LNG import

Giving details of the case, Mr Babar said that Mr Shah claimed to own a piece of land having purchased it from sellers in support of which he had also produced relevant documents.

The sellers, he said, had also said that they had no claim on the property after selling it to Mr Shah.

“No one has complained that his or her land has been unjustly appropriated by Mr Shah, yet NAB claims that the land does not belong to Mr Shah, without providing any evidence in support of its allegation,” he said.

Mr Babar said that Mr Shah had been the leader of opposition who did not claim medical expenses and usual sumptuary allowance. He also did not perform Haj at the expense of the state despite being the minister for Haj.

“It is most unfortunate that accountability in Pakistan has been weaponised to crush political dissent and for political re-engineering, more so under the present dispensation in which the NAB chairman has allowed the organisation to play second fiddle to the selected government,” Mr Babar said.

The PPP leader said that never before the accountability process had been made such a farce as now by NAB under its present leadership “which has willingly allowed itself to become a veritable arm of the powers that be for political manipulations and re-engineering”.

Mr Shah was arrested by a joint team of NAB’s Rawalpindi and Sukkur offices from his Islamabad residence on Sept 19 last year in a case about his alleged assets beyond means.

Gas shortage

Meanwhile, PPP’s parliamentary leader in Senate, Sherry Reh­man, has slammed the government for gas shortage in the country and called for a parliamentary inquiry over the delay in LNG import, saying the government must be held accountable for this alleged mismanagement of the issue.

In a statement, Ms Rehman regretted that “due to Tabahi Sarkar’s incompetence, our circular debt in the gas sector has reached a shocking figure of Rs350bn”.

“Pakistan is already going through severe gas shortage and now the government will drop another bomb on the people by increasing the gas price to pay for the circular debt,” she added.

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2020