ISLAMABAD The Supreme Court on Friday sought a complete record from State Bank of Pakistan of those influential persons who have got their loans written off since 1971. A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and comprising Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday and Justice Ghulam Rabbani heard a suo moto notice of the waived loans issue. During the course of hearing, the Chief Justice remarked that depositors were begging at streets while those whose loans had been written off had reached top offices, adding that the defaulters who would not return back the national wealth would be sent behind the bars. Justice Ramday asked Khawaja Haris to contest this public interest case in the larger interest of the nation. Arguing before the bench, Advocate Salman Raja contended that some Rs 103 billion had been taken as loan since 1990, while the mark up had been Rs 99 billion. He said that State Bank had not shared details. Earlier, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had informed the Supreme Court that more than Rs 193 billion loans had been written off in the country from 1997 till 2009. The counsel for the SBP told media persons outside the premises of SC building after submitting detail sheets about the written off loans that the SBP was preparing the list of those people whose loans had been written off from 1971 to 1997 on the order of the Supreme Court. These loans were written off by 37 banks and there are 19,711 beneficiaries whose loans have been written off and this number includes many people whose loans were more than Rs 0.5 billion, he added. It is pertinent to mention here that the Supreme Court has taken suo moto notice of this issue back in 2006. The Supreme Court has ordered SBP to provide the list of the loans written off from 1971. But the SBP produced the list of the people whose loans were written off from 1997 to 2009. The case was later adjourned till August 02.