Ahsan Iqbal, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), was ruled to be exonerated in the Narowal Sports City Complex case by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday.
After an encroachment issue surfaced in July 2019, a reference was lodged against the federal minister at the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Islamabad on December 18, 2020.
The PML-N leader was detained in December 2019 and freed on bail in February of the following year. Iqbal’s request for acquittal, however, had been denied by the accountability court in February of this year.
Iqbal’s appeal was heard today by a two-judge panel that included IHC Chief Justice (CJ) Athar Minallah and Justice Saman Rafat Imtiaz. The NAB investigating officer informed the court that the case was assigned to him in 2018 and that the arrest was made in 2019. This was done at the request of the IHC.
The NAB filed the reference, according to the CJ, “without even knowing what CDWP – the technical, financial and economic studies of various projects – is.”
Have you seen the secretary’s statement, which you called as a sworn witness in the case? The judge slammed the NAB for having “stopped a public project” without taking the expenses into consideration.
The NAB investigative officer stated in court, “We did not stop the project.
The NAB prosecutor remarked in reference to the most recent NAB law revisions, “This case is being seen under the modified law.” The court remarked, “[But] the revisions have nothing to do with this case. Your obligations required you to look into corruption, but your goals were different, CJ Minallah stated.