An Islamabad High Court (IHC) division bench comprising Chief Justice (CJ) Athar Minallah and Justice Lubna Saleem has ordered on February 25, 2020 the release on bail of former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and former interior minister Ahsan Iqbal in the LNG Terminal and Narowal Sports City project cases, respectively. Their release comes after seven months behind bars for Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and two months for Ahsan Iqbal. The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) that had incarcerated both Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders faced tough grilling by the bench regarding the grounds for their arrest. In the case of Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, it was revealed that the charge against him that as petroleum minister he manipulated the appointment of a UK-based firm, QED, as a consultant for the LNG Terminal project held no water as the entire project was funded by USAID, which also appointed QED. Similarly, NAB's accusation that Shahid Khaqan Abbasi managed the appointment of a firm Maverick Legal for QED's assistance was shot down during the proceedings when NAB's investigating officer could not produce any documentary evidence for the same. Under questioning by the bench, he finally admitted that Maverick Legal too had been appointed by USAID. Trying to manufacture reliance on a Supreme Court directive to launch the probe, NAB's prosecutor was embarrassed when told by the IHC bench that the apex court had referred the matter to NAB for further action and that is all. To top off this comedy of errors, the NAB investigating officer read out a statement of the ex-secretary for petroleum, Abid Saeed, who had turned approver in the case. But CJ Minallah wanted to know how the NAB chairman could pardon the then federal secretary who was the principal accounting officer of the ministry in charge of the whole project. The CJ made a rhetorical remark about the reference against Abbasi being prepared on the basis of a statement recorded after a lapse of five years. The investigating officer then tried to insinuate that a lower tariff was available from another company dealing in LNG, but soon confessed during questioning by the court that the said company had not participated in the bidding process, which was in any case covered by a USAID grant for a specific purpose and therefore did not fall under the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rules. In Ahsan Iqbal's case, since NAB has yet to frame charges against him and could not satisfy the court that corruption rather than alleged procedural lapses were involved in the Narowal Sports City project, NAB could only watch sheepishly as Ahsan Iqbal too was granted bail.

Of late, the superior courts have taken NAB to task for arbitrarily, even without investigation, arresting people accused of some misdemeanor and keeping them incarcerated while so-called investigations proceed. But in a number of cases even before this one, judicial scrutiny has exposed NAB's lack of capacity or expertise to conduct such investigations, which cause hardship to those languishing behind bars indefinitely. The courts are increasingly finding this unacceptable on the logic that investigations can surely proceed even without keeping the accused under lock and key, and if NAB has reservations about any of them attempting to flee the country to escape prosecution, surely remedy lies in asking for surrender of their passports and putting their names on the Exit Control List rather than keeping them behind bars. A vigorous debate is emerging on the NAB chairman's powers of arrest under the NAB Ordinance. Parliament should take up this issue and modify these powers to conform to the normal law of the land rather than the present draconian setup that has already caused so much unnecessary hardship and in the process earned NAB a bad name for being partisan and pillorying only the opposition.