Lahore District and Sessions Judge Mujahid Mustaqeem on Saturday reserved the judgement on an application filed by Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) Member of the Provincial Assembly (MPA) Chaudhry Moonis Elahi seeking acquittal in the National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) land scam, until October 21.
The Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) prosecutor argued that Moonis had opened bogus bank accounts in name of his manager Abdul Malik and his wife for sake of corruption in NICL and deposited Rs 320 million in the said accounts. FIA then lodged two FIRs against Moonis alleging that his manger opened forged accounts in Allied Bank Limited New Airport and Dubai Islamic Bank Main Boulevard branch and accused Mohsin Warriach deposited Rs 220 million in first account and Rs 100 million in the second account.
FIA alleged that the money was actually taken by Moonis. According to the FIA report, Malik stated he opened an account on instructions of Moonis and Rs 220 million were allegedly transferred into the account. During hearing of the application, Moonis’ counsels Malik Amjad Pervaiz and Rai Basher argued that there was not a single evidence in record of FIA and their client was being victimised only on political grounds.
They argued that all private prosecution witnesses that were presented against Moonis, recorded their statements before the special judge banking offence that they had never given any statement against Moonis before the magistrate but FIA got their thumb impressions on blank papers, which were later used for preparation of their statements to produce before the magistrate.
FIA could not recover even a single rupee from Moonis during investigation and physical remand, the defence counsels said.
