LAHORE: A city magistrate on Thursday remanded former commissioner Rawalpindi Capt Muhammad Mahmood (Retd) and land acquisition collector Waseem Tabish in four-day custody to Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) for their alleged involvement in the Rawalpindi ring road scam.
A team of the ACE produced the suspects before the magistrate and sought their physical remand for 14 days to hold investigation.
The investigating officer stated that the suspects changed the design of the ring road project with mala fide intention to benefit certain housing societies. He said the suspects also made ghost payments under the head of land acquisition. The act of the suspects caused a huge loss to the public money.
The suspects’ counsel however opposed the remand and said his clients had already furnished complete record and details of the case to the ACE. He said former special assistant to Prime Minister Zulfi Bukhari and Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan were given a clean chit who was also named in the scam.
He said the ACE had no reason to seek remand as it was not a murder case wherein a murder weapon was supposed to be recovered.
The magistrate however granted four-day remand of the suspects to the ACE with a direction to produce them again on July 19.
The other day, ACE Director General Gohar Nafees told the media that the former commissioner and the land acquisition collector were being interrogated to trace other suspects involved in the scam.
The official said that Mahmood is suspected of misusing his powers, whereas Tabish is suspected of buying property worth tens of millions of rupees after corruption.
He said some big developers of housing societies were authorized to establish five interchanges on the ring road. He said Nova Housing Society believed to be owned by the close relatives of minister Ghulam Sarwar was involved in selling its one file for Rs10 million and had earned a total Rs1.5 billion from files sale. The DG said that in March 2020 the construction company was directed to change the alignment of the project. He said that this changed caused the length of the road to increase from 22 to 68 kilometres.
He said “The approval (for the change in alignment) was not taken from the Punjab Chief Minister. New interchanges were added in the project and no No-Objection Certifications (NOCs) were taken from the Capital Development Authority and National Highway Authority.
He said land worth Rs2.6 billion was purchased without the approval of the new alignment causing the money to go down the drain.
He said the land in Rawalpindi was purchased at a lower rate and the one in Attock was brought at a higher rate and Rs2.1 billion was used to buy land in Attock.
He said that changes were made in the project to benefit the contractor and this exposed the nexus of the bureaucracy and the property mafia.
He said that the main beneficiaries of the scandal were the housing societies involved in the project and the same were made in March 2020 in a hurry to purchase the land.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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