Islamabad: Two judges of the Pakistani Supreme Court will look into the circumstances of the mysterious death of an officer of the country’s anti-corruption agency to determine whether he committed suicide or was murdered.
The late Kamran Faisal, an assistant director in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), had been investigating a rental power project scam, in which former water and power minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, now prime minister, was among the accused.
His body, hanging from a ceiling fan, was found in his room last week at the Federal Lodges, a government hostel in Islamabad.
During the hearing of a case on implementation of the court’s verdict last year cancelling nine rental power generation projects, the chief justice converted a note submitted by the court’s registrar about Faisal’s death into a petition.
The chief justice set up a separate two-member bench consisting of Justice Jawad S. Khwaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain to deal with the petition.
Faisal’s family, parents and colleagues had been demanding an independent judicial probe into the officer’s death, rejecting a postmortem report according to which it was a case of suicide.
NAB authorities told the court during the hearing that so far no first information report (FIR) about the January 18 death of the official had been lodged with the police.
In March 2012, the top court had revoked contracts for rental power projects and directed NAB to investigate and bring up corruption cases at accountability courts.
Last week, the bench overseeing implementation of the judgment ordered NAB to arrest all accused including the prime minister. The agency however did not comply with the order, citing lack of sufficient evidence.
During the hearing Wednesday, NAB chairman Admiral (retired) Fasih Bokhari retracted a statement that the investigation in the rental power projects scam would remain suspended till an inquiry into Faisal’s death was concluded. He told the court that the investigation would continue.
