An accountability court (AC) in Karachi on Monday sent the reference of making illegal recruitments in the PSO filed against former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi back to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman, says in media reports. Later speaking to the media, the former prime minister, while expressing jubilation that the court had finally acquitted him in the case, again demanded that the NAB be abolished. “The sooner we get rid of it, the better it is. You cannot run the country like this,” he asserted. He was of the view that the exact nature of such cases, which were filed for political engineering, soon came to light as the prosecution failed to prove the defendants guilty.  He said that in the countries whose judicial systems were extolled, cases were decided within days. The former prime minister said what an irony that despite the passage of several years, the prosecution managed to produce only one witness in the reference.

“Let me remind you that the reference filed against me was not that of corruption but was related to the misuse of powers,” he said, adding, “The court said this even before that there was no justification for filing this case.” Abbasi called upon all stakeholders in the country’s political system, especially the army chief and the chief justice of Pakistan, to sit together and find a way out of the present stalemate. The National Accountability Bureau had filed a reference against Abbasi, PSO’s former managing director Sheikh Imranul Haq and deputy managing director/chief financial officer Yacoob Suttar for allegedly causing a loss of Rs138.96 million to the national exchequer. As per the reference, Abbasi, when he was the minister for petroleum and natural resources, had in connivance with Mirza appointed Sheikh as MD and Suttar as DMD of the PSO in violation of the rules and regulations.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan