Daily Times

The country has two separate set of laws – one for the rest of the country, and one for Sindh, Former information minister Sharjeel Memon, currently under trial in a corruption reference, said on Saturday.

He made the remark in an informal conversation with the media outside an accountability court where he had been presented for a corruption trial.

“The Supreme Court has said that anyone who is contesting a case in a trial court should not be denied bail,” he said when asked how he feels about his petition for review and application for bail being turned down by the Sindh High Court.

He gave the example of Captain Safdar’s case, in which the accountability court ordered to grant the PML-N leader bail after he submitted surety bonds worth Rs5 million.

“Nawaz Sharif’s son-in-law, too, is facing corruption charges in a National Accountability Bureau (NAB) court in Islamabad, but he was released on bail after initially being arrested for failing to appear before the court.”

NAB had moved the Islamabad High Court against the decision to grant Safdar bail but lost the case.

Earlier, during the hearing on Saturday, Memon’s lawyer concluded his cross-questioning of a prosecution witness. The former minister, along with 11 others, is facing a corruption trial.

NAB had filed a reference against him in 2016. Others accused were the then provincial information secretary, deputy directors of the Sindh information department Mansoor Ahmed Rajput, and Mohammed Yousuf Kaboro. They were accused of committing corruption from 2013 to 2015 in awarding advertisements of provincial government’s awareness campaigns in electronic media, thereby causing a loss of around Rs3.27 billion to the national exchequer.

Zeenat Jahan, who was posted as director in the provincial information department in 2014, had lodged a complaint with NAB after she had ‘observed massive financial corruption and misuse of powers in the department’. Currently, she is serving as information director in the provincial information department at Karachi and is a prime witness in the case.

In the hearing on Saturday, Memon’s lawyer, Amir Raza Naqvi, asked her if it was true that in the past she had held more than one position at a time. She responded in the affirmative.

Naqvi then asked her how she was promoted from grade 16 to grade 17. She clarified that she had not been promoted, instead she had been upgraded in the early 1990s.

She also told the court that she had been attacked in 2017 and had lodged a complaint as well. Naqvi asked her if she had nominated those who were responsible.

“Those who are responsible can only be identified once an investigation takes place,” Jahan responded.

The lawyers of the other accused will cross-examine the prosecution witnesses in the next hearing. The court has adjourned the hearing until May 26.

Published in Daily Times, May 20^th 2018.