ISLAMABAD - A division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) will Monday (today) resume hearing in a contempt of court petition against the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman for not acting against former military ruler General (retd) Pervez Musharraf for his alleged corruption during his tenure as the head of country.
The IHC division bench comprising Chief Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan will conduct hearing of the petition filed by Inamur Rahim Advocate, seeking contempt of court proceedings against NAB chairman for not initiating an inquiry into the allegations that Musharraf in his nomination papers had declared assets beyond his known sources of income.
The petitioner argued that Musharraf, as the chief of the army staff and the country’s president, violated his oath of defending the country and protecting its citizens. Pointing to the page 237 of Musharraf’s book, In the Line of Fire, and its chapter titled ‘Man Hunt’, Rahim mentioned that the former military ruler admitted to handing over many people to the United States to make money.
In the contempt petition, Rahim stated that Musharraf illegally disposed of thousands of acres of precious lands situated in different cantonments, violating the rules and regulations in this regard. In the Karachi cantonment alone, some 2,125 acres were disposed of, whose details had already been provided to NAB. He mentioned that following the court’s directives, the NAB only issued a call-up notice to the petitioner and did not make any further effort.
It was in January, 2018 when a division bench of IHC had held that NAB could proceed against retired generals over corruption charges. The verdict cleared a 19-year-old ambiguity in the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) of 1999 due to which the anti-corruption watchdog had always been reluctant to proceed against retired army officers despite complaints of massive corruption.