Former Rawalpindi ring road commissioner, collector indicted

On Wednesday, a special anti-corruption court in LAHORE charged retired Capt. Muhammad Mahmood Rai, who was Rawalpindi’s former commissioner, and Waseem Tabish, who was in charge of getting land for the city, in the ring road scam.

Both of the accused officers pleaded “not guilty,” and on July 14, the court told the prosecution to bring in its witnesses.

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The accused officers were in court with their lawyer, Burhan Moazam Malik. They were out on bail.

The lawyer said that his clients’ case was made up by the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE).

He said that the former chief minister had set up a three-person committee to look into the situation. Two of the committee members cleared the accused officers of the charges, while the third member suggested that a first information report (FIR) be filed against them.

The ACE said that the former commissioner and the person in charge of getting land caused the national exchequer to lose more than Rs10 billion because they let five interchanges be built on the ring road by big developers of housing societies.

It said that Nova Housing Society sold a file for Rs10 million and made a total of Rs1.5 billion by selling files. People who are close to the former federal minister Ghulam Sarwar are thought to own the society.

In a recent development, the federal government cleared 13 bureaucrats, including Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Tabish, in a departmental inquiry into the scandal.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had asked for the charges against the government officers to be looked into again. The investigation showed that they were not guilty.

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