KARACHI: Muhammad Javed Hanif, former chairman of Karachi Port Trust (KPT), has approached the Sindh High Court (SHC) and filed a petition for urgent hearing for his release.
Javed Hanif was involved in a case of corruption and abuse of authority for illegally appointing 940 employees in KPT.
On July 21, 2018, Rashid A Rizvi advocate, counsel for the petitioner filed petition for urgent hearing and argued that his client is also contesting general elections and due to the arrest, he is deprived of free and fear election campaign. He argued that the court may direct NAB court to release him immediately.
It needs to be mentioned here that Muhammad Javed Hanif is confined in Central Jail Karachi on judicial remand. The court fixed application for hearing for July 23, 2018.
According to the NAB officials, Javed Hanif is involved in charges of corruption and abuse of authority for illegally appointing 940 employees in KPT in connivance with MQM’s Babar Ghauri, the then minister for ports and shipping. He further argued that the appointments were made in violation of KPT law, rules and regulations “without advertisement of vacancies, competitive process, age criteria, medical examination of appointees and in violation of basic formalities”.
A large number of those appointed had a criminal record in serious cases such as “terrorism, premeditated murder and robbery” and that the illegal appointments resulted in losses to the national exchequer to the tune of Rs2.8 billion, the NAB officials said.
After argument, the court directed NAB officials to file comments on July 23.
