LAHORE: An accountability court on Saturday extended the physical remand of Jang Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mir Shakilur Rahman for 10 days in a 34-year-old case pertaining to alleged illegal acquiring of property.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) produced Mir before the court after his initial 11-day remand, given on April 7, expired. As the hearing started, a special prosecutor for NAB requested the court to extended Mir’s physical remand by 15 days.
Responding to the request, defence counsel Amjad Pervaiz said that his client has just received a copy of NAB’s demand and sought time to submit a reply. Accepting the plea, the court briefly adjourned the hearing.
After the hearing resumed, the NAB prosecutor informed the court that the bureau had sought different records from Mir.
“Relevant SOPs have to be followed to retrieve data from the government departments,” he said, adding: “the [pace of] progress [in the case] is dependent on how fast those departments provide the requested information.”
“We have requested some more documents from LDA,” he said. To which, defence counsel remarked that NAB is “only wasting court’s time”.
“All the information asked for by the bureau has been duly provided,” Pervaiz said, adding that at this stage, there is no need to extend the remand.
Subsequently, the court adjourned the hearing while reserving its judgement which was announced shortly.
The bureau had arrested Mir on Mar 12 in a case which dates back to 1986 and involves the transfer of 54-canal land which, according to the anti-graft body, was illegally leased to Mir by then Punjab chief minister Nawaz Sharif “in violation of the relevant laws and rules”.
However, Mir has maintained that the property in question was bought from a private party “34 years ago and all evidence of this was given to NAB”.
Subsequently, on Mar 13, an accountability court remanded Mir into bureau’s custody for 12 days. The remand duration has been extended multiple times since.
‘HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN’:
Following Mir’s arrest, Jang Group, the parent company for Geo television, alleged that the bureau is running a targetted harassment campaign against its business interests. It has termed Mir’s arrest as an “attack on press freedom”.
The day Mir was arrested, the Jang Group had issued a statement, which claimed: “In the past 18 months, NAB has sent our reporters, producers, and editors — directly and indirectly — over a dozen notices, threatening a shutdown of our channels (via PEMRA) due to our reporting and our programmes on NAB.”
“NAB has also, through several means, tried to persuade us to go slow, to stop stories and to do others in its favor at the expense of the full truth.”
However, the bureau rejected all the statement terming it as “baseless”.
