Issuance of fake arms licences case: Supreme Court summons joint secretary of interior ministry for briefing

The Supreme Court on Tuesday summoned Joint Secretary, Ministry of Interior for a briefing over the reported issuing of some 35,000 fake arms licences including prohibited bores.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry directed the Joint Secretary to appear before the court on Wednesday, while hearing a bail plea of one Shehzad Ahmed, who was booked by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on allegations of having a role in the incident.
Earlier, on February 25, the court had rejected an inquiry report of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on fake arms licences, terming it incomplete. A three-member bench of the apex court comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed and Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday heard the bail plea of Shehzad Ahmed.
Shehzad Ahmad was a contractor supplying stationary to the Ministry of Interior. Later, he established links in the ministry and started issuing fake computerised arms & ammunition licences to different people. Till his arrest, he issued about 32,148 licences charging Rs 5,000 each.
The Ministry of Interior had initiated an inquiry against Shehzad Ahmad and an FIR was registered against him on May 19, 2009, under Sections 420, 468, 471 and 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) along with a Section of the Cyber Crime Act. Personal computers and laptops were recovered from his possession along with some bogus bank challans.
Forensic experts retrieved data from his computers that was deleted by the accused. According to the report, the data retrieved from his computers included list of the computerised arms license holders. Earlier, the case was filed before now defunct Islamabad High Court (IHC) and bail was granted to the accused against surety bonds of Rs 100,000.
Afterwards, Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi bench cancelled the bail plea of Shahzad Ahmed. And he approached the apex court for the same. Former Justice Tariq Mahmood, counsel for the applicant, contended that three section officers of the Interior Ministry, including Abdul Hakeem Kurd, Haji Abdul Khaliq and Malik Iftikhar, who were allegedly involved in the issuance of fake arms licences, were released on bail, but his client had been refused bail by the high court.
He denied the allegation of his client's in issuance of any fake licenses. He said that Shehzad Ahmed was behind the bars however, trial had not yet started. And the special court that is meant for cyber crimes was not established as well for hearing of the matter, he added.
The court grilled Raja Aleem Abbasi, Deputy Attorney General (DAG) at his failure to assist the court. 'You neither are in the know of law nor have any information about the case, then for what you have appeared before the court,' observed the bench.
Investigation officer appointed for the case (Inspector of FIA) also appeared before the court and admitted the fact that as many as nine months had lapsed but the case was still incomplete. He denied the claims of the petitioner that everything was done under the law and said the ministry did not have any agreement with him. The court directed the investigation officer to bring Joint Secretary of the relevant ministry with him on next hearing and postponed the matter.