ISLAMABAD: The Pink Residency case against Omni Group’s Abdul Ghani Majid and others was deferred by an accountability court (AC) on Thursday due to the illness of the prosecution witness.

The AC-II judge Muhammad Azam, while hearing the case adjourned the hearing as it was informed the prosecution witness Rasool Baksh was suffering from fever.

NAB prosecutor Waseem Javed informed the court at the outset of the hearing that witness Baksh was unable to come because of a fever he was experiencing. Prosecutors should provide an undertaking that the witness did not test positive for the Covid-19 but was simply suffering from a fever, the defence attorney said.

He further said that special judge central in the judicial complex, where accountability court is also located, and four members of his staff had tested positive for the Covid-19. The prosecutor said that flu and cough are spreading due to the current weather condition. The court adjourned the hearing of the case till January 27.

A Pink Residency case was launched by the NAB against Abdul Ghani Majid of Omni Group, along with 16 other individuals and entities. The “Pink Residency” project in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighbourhood is the subject of the citation. Two plots in Gulistan-e-Jauhar were allegedly illegally regularised by the accused. One allotment was 23 acres in size, while the other was seven acres. It has been claimed that the illegally-regularized tracts of land were paid for using bogus bank accounts. The NAB estimates that the illegal land regularization and consequent sale caused a loss of Rs4 billion to the national exchequer.

Meanwhile, the same court adjourned hearing of mega money laundering and Park Lane cases against former president Asif Ali Zardari and others due to the absence of the defense counsel, Farooq H Naek and power breakdown.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022