The National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) scam involving over Rs 9 billion is likely to take a new turn as the Supreme Court takes it up today (Tuesday) after a couple of weeks during which the chief investigator of the scam, Zafar Qureshi retired and the main accused Moonis Elahi got acquitted.
A three-member SC bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez will take up the case, in which the attorney general, the FIA director general, Qureshi, the deputy attorney general and the Punjab additional prosecutor general will appear on notice. The court will examine how Moonis, whose guilt was proved during the course of the investigation, got acquitted and it will also depute another investigator to head the investigation. Besides, the court will examine the 100-page investigative report of the scam submitted by Qureshi on September 30, the day of his retirement.
The court is also likely to take action against Interior Secretary Khawaja Siddique Akbar and FIA Director General Tehseen Anwar Shah, in light of Qureshi’s report contending that he had tried his best to finalise a closing challan but failed, as the interior secretary and the FIA director general did not let him complete it by adopting delaying tactics. Qureshi, a senior FIA officer, who earned a name for exposing influential people in the scam, retired on September 30, regretting that “stumbling blocks” in the bureaucracy did not let him finish his job.