Money trail of illicit cigarette making firm: Azad Kashmir govt urged to set up judicial commission

ISLAMABAD: The activists from Peoples Lawyers Forum and the Peoples Students Federation have demanded Azad Kashmir government to constitute a judicial commission to probe into money trail of an illicit cigarette manufacturing company in the area.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Peoples Lawyers Forum and the PSF's leaders Ali Raza, Majid Awan and Kaleem Qureshi presented a three-point agenda to the AJK authorities, demanding a probe in the affairs of the Wayward Tobacco Company Limited.

They threatened to observe a hunger strike outside the AJK assembly in the first week of November, if their demands were not met.

They said that a low-level employee of a bank had invested nearly Rs500 million in the company that must be probed.

The activists said that three of the four shareholders in the tobacco company were from Mardan in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

They said that two vehicles of the company were already seized for carrying contrabands including 730 cartons of illicit cigarettes, leading to tax evasion of around Rs15.4 million rupees.

The activists said that they gave the local administration three week time in September to probe the matter, but to no avail.

The activists said that illicit cigarette manufacturing was in full swing in Rawani without the official NOC, while the government had yet to initiate action against it.

They threatened to observe a hunger strike outside the AJK legislative assembly in the first week of November, if their demands were not met.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020