SHC grants permission to Nisar Khuhro to travel abroad

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday granted one-time permission to Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, a Pakistan Peoples Party leader and the adviser to the Sindh chief minister on works and services, to travel abroad for 38 days.

Khuhro, who in his long political career has served as the opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly, Sindh Assembly speaker and the provincial food minster, had approached the SHC against placement of his name on the Exit Control List (ECL) due to pending National Accountability Bureau’s corruption inquiries and investigations.

The petitioner’s counsel, Farooq H Naek, submitted that the wife of the Khuhro, who had been living in the United States with children, was seriously ill and the petitioner needed to travel to attend to his wife and kids.

Naek submitted that the petitioner intended to leave the country on April 7 and return on May 17, and requested the high court to grant one-time permission to him to travel abroad. A NAB special prosecutor submitted that the petitioner was facing NAB inquiries and investigations on charges of corruption and accumulation of wealth, and defended the NAB letter for placement of his name on the ECL. He said the high court might pass any order in accordance with the law.

A division bench of the SHC headed by Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro remarked that it was not disputed that no reference against the petitioner had been filed yet though he had been involved in three investigations for the last two years in which no any complaint of non-cooperation with NAB had been made.

The bench observed that the petitioner was allowed to travel abroad from April 7 to May 17 as a one-time permission and adjourned the hearing of the case till May 19.

It is pertinent to mention that Khuhro had also obtained protective pre-arrest bail in connection with two NAB inquiries against the provincial food department officials and him for release of wheat to mill owners through unsecured guarantees and money laundering charges. The NAB call-up notices had sought replies from Khuhro with regard to release of wheat on credit against unsecured guarantees of post-dated cheques to the mill owners, causing huge losses to the national exchequer.

In another call-up notice, NAB had sought details of Khuhro’s sources of income and expenditures from 2017 to 2019 as Rs47.9 million were recorded in Khuhro’s bank account wherein $70,000 were transferred to different individuals in the US during April 2017 till April 2018.