LAHORE A petition was filed in the Lahore High Court on Tuesday to challenge the appointment of eight unofficial directors of the Punjab Education Foundation, praying the court for the cancellation of the March 18 notification of their appointment. The petitioner, Muhammad & Ahmad (a company), in the public interest has questioned the appointment of Dr Zafar Iqbal Qureshi, Saira Afzal Tarar, MNA Mohyuddin Ghani, Dr Amjad Saqib, Raja Muhammad Anwar, Mrs Samia Aziz, Waqar Ahmad Khan, and Miss Basharat Kazim. The petitioner, through advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique, contends that the Punjab Education Foundation Act of 2004 has repealed the PEFA of 2001 and according to section 5 of the Act of 2004, the foundation, in order to carry out its affairs, has to get a board comprising seven official and eight unofficial members as directors. In the instant case, the petitioner contends, of the eight unofficial directors, six are civil servants as such their appointment runs in sheer violation of the merit and a bid to get official control over the foundation which aims at providing free of charge education to the kids. The petitioner contends that the Punjab Government has favoured its chums by including officials in the Board instead of the unofficial members which also runs counter to the spirit of article 38 of the Constitution. The petitioner has prayed for declaring the impugned notification null and void and that a direction may be passed to the authorities to strictly follow the merit. HAMESH REMAND: An accountability court on Tuesday extended the judicial remand of Hamesh Khan, Sheikh Afzal and Seth Nisar for 14 days further when the accused in Bank of Punjab Rs. 9 billion scam were produced before the court from jail. The court warned jail authorities of legal action if they remained failed to provide facilities to accused Hamesh Khan as per court already issued orders, as it ordered authorities concerned to produce the accused again on April, 18. According to details, on September 27, 2007, National Accountability Court (NAB) Punjab had filed a reference in an accountability court against 12 persons including six officials of Bank of Punjab (BoP) and six others accused of Rs 9 billion fraud. The investigation showed that accused Shaikh Muhammad Afzal, the director of the Haris Steel, with co-accused Muhammad Munir, Ali Ijaz, Abid Raza and Irfan Ali, in connivance with BoP ex-president Hamesh Khan, Haroon Aziz, Azizul Hameed, Muhammad Shoaib Qureshi, ex-general managers BoP Muhammad Adil Khan, Muhammad Nauman Arif and Muhammad Ziaul Haq, had allegedly opened 23 fictitious accounts with their fake and forged national identity cards and obtained loans of approximately Rs 9 billion from year 2005 to 2007 with the help of fake documentation, bogus collaterals, fictitious guarantees and mortgage deals executed by fake persons. In this reference, NAB has accused Hamesh of misuse of power and sanctioning illegal loans of worth Rs. 9 billion. While Seth Nisar has been accused of committing willful default of Rs. 930 million he borrowed from BoP. MOTHER GETS MINOR: The District and Sessions Court on Tuesday handed over a three-year son to her mother after recovering him from the illegal custody of his father. Jameela Bibi, a resident of Cantt had filed a petition in the court alleging that her husband Shahbaz had kept illegally her three years old son Roshan. She contended that owing to a domestic quarrel, his husband Shahbaz snatched her son and kicked her out from his house. She prayed the court to recover her son and hand over to her as per law, on her plea the court served a notice to the husband in this regard. He on Tuesday produced the son where he was handed over to his mother.