By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: Senate Deputy Chairman Saleem Mandviwala on Monday said although politicians and businessmen were regularly subjected to media trials, it was now the turn of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) officers to be tried in the media.
Speaking during a Senate session, he repeated the allegation that people were losing their lives due to alleged excesses of the accountability watchdog.
After NAB froze more than three million shares of different companies registered in Mandviwala’s name with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) in connection with the fake accounts case last month, the Senate deputy chairman has vowed to expose the bureau internationally.
Mandviwala yesterday said he had met the wife and daughter of retired brigadier Asad Munir, who committed suicide in 2019, who described the difficulties faced by the deceased before his death. The body of Munir, who was facing multiple inquiries by NAB, was found hanging from the ceiling fan in the study of his apartment located in the highly guarded Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad in March 2019. He worked both with the military and the government.
Mandviwalla said he found out that Munir had survived the first suicide attempt and later hung himself. He said Munir’s family had told him “what happened with his life since the NAB investigation started”. The Senate deputy chairman stressed that the government as well as NAB should take notice of the issue in order to stop “mud-slinging” against people.
“Politicians are smeared every day; it has no effect on us and we will face it, but people cannot tolerate. People are committing suicides, leaving the country and they are worried news about them being issued a NAB notice will be run any moment,” he said, adding that such developments were on the rise.
Referring to NAB’s reported complaint that it was being subjected to a “media trial”, Mandviwalla said it was “interesting that until now every other person was subjected to a media trial but for the first time, NAB’s media trial is taking place”.
He said this media trial against NAB would continue and more and more people would join it. “Now we will hold the trial of every NAB officer by name in the media,” he announced. While talking about the fake accounts case, Mandviwalla questioned how an account could be fake if was opened in a bank, saying “there can be fraud or identity theft, but there can’t be a fake account.”
