The Supreme Court on Monday sought from Sindh government the details of its contract with Serbian company for the procurement of armoured personnel carriers (APCs).
A two-judge bench headed by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali had taken up an application filed by Syed Mehmood Akhtar Naqvi, a civil rights campaigner, who moved the court against the procurement of armoured personnel carriers (APCs).
The court extended its stay order till Dec 31, precluding the provincial government from purchasing armoured personnel carriers.
In an application, Naqvi submitted that provincial assembly passed the Sindh Emergency Procurement Bill, 2014 on February 7 this year for purchase of the different items required for the security agencies.
Subsequently, the provincial authorities made an agreement with a Serbian firm for the purchase of APCs worth Rs8 billion on inflated rates without issuing any legal procurement tender.
Naqvi claimed that APCs being purchased have already been scrapped in Serbia and were not up to the mark but still the Sindh government was purchasing the same at exorbitant rates. He stated that the same vehicles can be purchased from America at a relatively lower price of Rs 40 million each. He claimed that several top officers were removed when they refused to become part of this controversial deal, adding previous IGP was transferred for the same purpose.
Naqvi said that Sindh government enacted the law with malafide intention in order to purchase the APCs and other equipment including bulletproof jackets, helmets for the law enforcement agencies, illegally. The court was pleaded to declare the act and subsequent procurements as unconstitutional and set aside the new law.