Supreme Court suspends SHC verdict on sugar inquiry commission report

(Karachi) Supreme Court has suspended the Sindh High Court’s (SHC) verdict of declaring the sugar inquiry commission and its report null and void, media reported on Wednesday

A three-judge bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed, allowed the relevant institutions to proceed with their investigation into the sugar scandal in compliance with the report.

The top court gave the ruling on a petition filed by the federal government challenging the SHC judgment.

On August 17, the SHC declared report of Sugar Inquiry Commission null and void. The court accepted plea of owners of sugar mills and ordered that government can launch inquiry against the mills but report of commission should not influence the investigation.

The inquiry commission had claimed that sugar mills belonging to the families of the country’s top politicians including PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif, PTI’s Jahangir Tareen and Khusro Bakhtiar, PML-Q’s Moonis Elahi and PPP’s Asif Ali Zardari were among the beneficiaries of the crisis.

In its forensic report – issued on May 21 – the commission had accused the sugar mill owners of earning illegal profits to the tune of billions of rupees through unjustified price hikes, benami transactions, tax evasion, misuse of subsidy and purchasing sugarcane off the books.