ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a notice to the prosecutor general (PG) National Accountability Bureau (NAB), and called a report from the Accountability Court, Lahore, on post-arrest bail of Mir Shakilur Rehman.
A three-member bench, headed by Justice Mushir Alam, heard the appeal of the editor-in-chief of Jang/Geo Group, against the order of the Lahore High Court (LHC).
A division bench of the LHC on 8th July 2020 had dismissed the writ petition of Shakilur Rehman.
Khawaja Haris, representing Shakilur Rehman, contended that the allegation against his client was that he had purchased one plot in Lahore with the "connivance" of the DG Lahore Development Authority, and director Land Revenue.
He said none of the co-accused was arrested, but his client was behind the bars, since 12th March 2020, without any trial.
Mir Shakilur Rehman on September 10th had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the LHC verdict, which denied him bail in the allotment of a plot case in Lahore.
The petitioner said the division bench had totally misread the contents of the DG LDA's letter dated 26 September 1990, and, thereby, committed a jurisdictional error in assuming that the petitioner was required to pay market price for the excess land sold to him in 1986, when, as a matter of fact, the letter dated 26 September 1990 unambiguously establishes that prior to 26 September 1990, only reserve price was payable for excess area.
He submitted that with respect to the excess land, the exemption policy itself stipulated that the exemptee could purchase it at the reserve price, coupled with the fact that it was not the NAB's case that the reserve price fixed at the relevant time for the land situated in Johar Town Housing Society Phase-II was other than Rs60,000 per kanal, the division bench has erred in presuming any loss to the LDA or, for that matter, any financial benefit to the petitioner on this account and, thereby, wrongly denied bail to the petitioner.
The refusal of bail to the petitioner by the High Court, and thereby his continuous incarceration, inter alia, for alleged non-payment of purported dues to the LDA, without there being any adjudication thereof by a competent court of law after observing due process, is violative of the petitioner's fundamental right guaranteed under Article 10-A of the Constitution.
He stated that even if it be presumed, though without conceding, that any sum of money was due from the petitioner to the LDA, the provisions of the NAO, 1999 could not be invoked for recovery of this amount, when the LDA Act itself provided for a mechanism to recover the same.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020