Daniyal Aziz announces legal battle against Shahzad Akbar

ISLAMABAD: Former minister for privatisation and PML-N leader Daniyal Aziz on Wednesday said that that he would initiate a legal battle against PM's aide  Shahzad Akbar.

The PML-N leader announced to take him to court after the prime minister's adviser on law and interior made claims against him and other PML-N leaders a week earlier related to land grabbing.

Aziz, addressing a press conference, said that had was appointed on several high-ranking government positions, while on the other hand, no one knew who the incumbent government officials were. "No one knows who you are, why are you ruining the lives of innocent people?"

"I announce today that I will drag you, Shahzad Akbar, to a [criminal court] and will fight a legal battle against you so that you will understand that even innocent people know how to fight back," he said.

Prior to his take on Akbar, he said that the incumbent government had talked about how the system worked in the UK, and they claim of moving forward towards Riasat-e-Madina.

"However, today, I won't talk about it. I will speak on an adviser named Shahzad Akbar, who levelled allegations against several people recently, including me," he said, adding that the press handout given in Akbar's recent presser had his father's name wrong as Mohammad Aziz, when his name was Anwer Aziz.

Aziz said that according to the report, the government had retrieved land worth Rs2,500 million from him, adding that the "important" thing here was that he "had no link with the land" recovered by the authorities.

The PML-N leader said that his father bought the land back in the 1960s through a government scheme and that he had "no link" according to the law with the land.

Aziz said that his father fought a legal battle of possession against the Punjab government when he was alive and had won the case.

The PML-N leader, citing, which he claimed was a court order against Anti Corruption Punjab, said that the court had stopped the authorities from "interfering with the possession of the land".

Last week, Akbar claimed that the government had made recoveries worth Rs210 billion from Punjab over the course of the past two-and-a-half years.

He claimed that of the amount, Rs24bn worth of recoveries were made from 36 PML-N members, from whom 8,085 acres of land was taken back.

Moreover, he said that land worth Rs7 billion was taken back from Chaudhry Tanveer and 2,400 kanals worth Rs2.5 billion from Daniyal Aziz.