Daily Times

KARACHI: On Thursday morning, NAB failed to detain Sindh Assembly Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani following fierce resistance by his guards and protests by PPP supporters. The team went after staying outside his residence for 15 hours.

According to a report, the NAB team on Wednesday had raided the house of Agha Siraj Durrani at 4 pm after the Sindh High Court refused his bail plea, along with requests filed by 10 other individuals.

Two special teams had been formed to take Durrani into custody.

Durrani’s guards and party activists showed resistance when the NAB team tried to arrest him. A huge number of his supporters had gathered outside his residence and stayed at the venue the whole night to guard their leader.

Durrani is in the hot water for allegedly owning assets beyond known sources of income. A 16-page written verdict authored by Justice Iqbal Kalhoro was issued on Wednesday.

According to the verdict, the speaker’s assets amount to Rs1.61 billion, whereas in 2018, they were Rs0.18 billion.

The judgment further pointed out that none of his family members has ever held any political office.

NAB had alleged that Durrani bought the property in the name of his children with illegal income, the judgment further observed.

Earlier in December 2020, an accountability court in Karachi had indicted Durrani and 18 others in a case of owning assets beyond known means of income.