LAHORE: Asad Munir had promised his granddaughter he would take her to Disneyland the following summer but in November 2017, his name was placed on Pakistan’s no-fly list after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) launched a corruption probe against the retired brigadier for alleged misuse of authority in 2008.
In March 2019, Munir, 66, took his own life in Islamabad.
A day earlier, NAB’s executive board had approved the filing of a corruption reference against him and other former officials of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for illegally allotting a plot in Islamabad. In his replies to NAB in preceding months — seen by Arab News — Munir said the plot was allotted by the chairman of the authority at the time and he had just forwarded the case to the chairman after three other officers also scrutinized it and found the transaction to be within the law.
Since 2017, at least 13 people being probed by NAB have died — either by suicide or due to cardiac arrests and stress — while in custody, according to a brief compiled by Sehar Kamran, a former senator from the opposition Pakistan People’s Party, many of whose leaders are currently being investigated by NAB. The brief has been submitted before the Human Rights Committees of the Senate and National Assembly, the ministry of human rights, the Pakistan Bar Council, and the chief justice of Pakistan, among others.
Kamran told Arab News she had not received a response from the court or the parliamentary committees despite sending reminders.
Other than the case of Asad Munir, this reporter could not independently verify the details of the 12 other deaths listed in Kamran’s brief.
“There has to be a probe on how these people are dying in custody,” she said.
While hearing a case in April 2019, then chief justice Asif Saeed Khosa also questioned the manner in which NAB conducted its investigations.
“People have now started committing suicide,” the chief justice was quoted by local media as saying. “The Supreme Court has taken up the matter of mysterious suicide committed by former intelligence officer and analyst Asad Munir.”
Munir’s daughter, Meena Gabeena, described how her father’s life unraveled as he faced the corruption allegations.
“Being placed on the list was very troubling for him,” she told Arab News. “He started to go into depression.”
On March 14, 2019, after Munir learnt from watching the news that his case would go onto the next stage of inquiry, his wife found him in his study, holding a gun under his chin and sobbing uncontrollably. She hid the gun.
The next morning, she found him again, this time hanging from a ceiling fan.
“I am committing suicide to avoid humiliation, being handcuffed and paraded in front of the media,” Munir wrote in a letter addressed to the chief justice.
“I request you, the honorable chief justice, to take notice of NAB’s officials conduct so that other government officials are not convicted for the crimes they had not committed,” he added. “I am giving my life in the hope that you the honorable Chief Justice will bring positive changes in the system where incompetent people are playing with the life and honor of citizen in the name of accountability.”
A year after Munir’s death, Khurram Humayun, another former government official, being investigated by NAB for embezzlement, took his own life. His family did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The National Accountability Bureau, established in 1999 by then military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, functions under a law that gives it the powers to arrest anyone under investigation for a period of 90 days. The detention duration can be extended. In one example, opposition politician Hamza Shahbaz remained in jail for 20 months in a money laundering case despite never being convicted by a court. He finally got bail last week.
Rights activists have called such pretrial detentions by NAB a human rights violation.
“Legal institutions have the right to pursue a case against a person,” Dr. Mehdi Hasan of the Human Rights Commission Pakistan said, “but to detain or arrest someone when a crime is not proven is a violation of basic human rights.”
Indeed, since the Prime Minister Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) formed its government in August 2018, 15 high-profile politicians have been in and out of prison over corruption, as per an Arab News tally. Of them, only two, Aleem Khan and Sibtain Khan, belong to the ruling party. The rest are from opposition parties: Asif Ali Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Khawaja Saad Rafique, Khawaja Salman Rafique, Shehbaz Sharif, Hamza Shehbaz, Khursheed Shah, Faryal Talpur, Agha Siraj Durrani, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Khawaja Asif, Ahsan Iqbal and Maryam Nawaz Sharif.
A disproportionate number of the “179 mega corruption cases” listed on NAB’s website are against PTI’s rivals, including former prime ministers Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Yousaf Raza Gilani and Nawaz Sharif.
A NAB spokesperson repeatedly declined requests for comments for this article. Raoof Hasan, the prime minister’s aide on information, also declined comment.
“I think that these kinds of incidents should not happen in such large numbers,” Irfan Qadir, former attorney general of Pakistan and an ex-NAB prosecutor general, said about alleged deaths and illness of people being investigated by the accountability bureau. “Even if the cases against these people [who died] were borderline or difficult to determine or there was any doubt, even then it is not a good thing that they died in custody ... This is so tragic.”
“The way to handle such cases is that you send the [corruption] case to the court and if the court convicts him then arrest the person,” Qadir added.
Malik Aamir Dogar, a special assistant to the prime minister on political affairs, admitted NAB was overstepping powers.
“To an extent this is absolutely true that NAB is exceeding its powers,” he told Arab News. “There are a lot of things that need to be revisited in NAB’s law and amendments are needed. In many cases the high courts and supreme court have also expressed serious reservations. In the parliament we tried that some things that are excessive and are overdue in the law are revisited, such as arrest during inquiry, and the 90-days remand tenure that is too long.”
But with opposition parties having launched a countrywide agitation to unseat PM Khan, it would be difficult at the moment, Dogar said, to reach an agreement with them to amend anti-corruption laws.
In the meantime, Munir’s family has withdrawn the case filed in the Supreme Court after his death. In a letter to the chief justice seen by Arab News, his wife said she neither had the resources nor the capacity to pursue the case.
National accountability bureau ‘exceeding’ powers, Pakistani PM’s adviser says
https://arab.news/9rb4s
National accountability bureau ‘exceeding’ powers, Pakistani PM’s adviser says
- Chief justice has questioned NAB’s investigation tactics, asked why people were falling ill or dying in its custody
- “There are a lot of things that need to be revisited in NAB law and amendments are needed,” Aamir Dogar says
US weapons abandoned in Afghanistan were used in Pakistan train hijacking last month — report
- Militants held hundreds of passengers hostage in southwestern Pakistan last month, killing 31 soldiers, staff and civilians
- Pakistan has voiced its concerns over presence of advanced US weapons in Afghanistan, which Washington wants returned
ISLAMABAD: Militants used weapons abandoned by US forces in Afghanistan during a deadly train hijacking last month in southwestern Pakistan, a report by international newspaper “The Washington Post” said on Monday.
Pakistan has voiced its concerns over the presence of advanced US weapons in Afghanistan which Washington has sought to be returned by Kabul’s Afghan Taliban rulers. Islamabad has urged the United Nations to recover these weapons, warning that militant groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) were gaining access to them.
BLA militants stormed the Jaffar Express train in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province last month, holding hundreds of passengers hostage. The military said it killed 33 militants in a rescue operation that lasted over 24 hours. It said the hijacking killed 31 soldiers, staff and civilians.
As per the report, Pakistani officials gave The Post access to dozens of weapons in May that they said were seized from captured or killed militants. After months of inquiries, The Post said the US Army and the Pentagon confirmed that 63 weapons shown to reporters had been provided by the US government to Afghan forces.
“After the March 11 train attack by Baloch militants, which claimed at least 26 lives, Pakistani officials provided serial numbers for three US rifles allegedly used by the attackers,” the report said. “At least two came from US stocks and had been provided to Afghan forces, according to records obtained by The Post through the Freedom of Information Act.”
Of the 63 weapons shown by Pakistani officials, the post said most were M16 rifles, alongside several, more-modern M4 carbine models. It said Pakistani officials also displayed a handful of PVS14 night-vision devices, which are used throughout the American armed forces but could not be independently verified as former US government property.
It said these weapons left behind by American forces found themselves in the hands of militants after being traded along Pakistan’s porous border with Afghanistan at illicit weapons bazaars.
The Post cited a 2023 report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which estimated in 2023 that when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, over $7 billion in American military equipment was still in the country.
The report said SIGAR concluded the US military had an uneven record of keeping track of weapons provided to the Afghans, which was exacerbated by its “abrupt and uncoordinated” withdrawal in 2021.
The report said SIGAR estimated more than a quarter-million rifles were left behind by US forces during their withdrawal from Afghanistan, enough to arm the entire US Marine Corps as well as nearly 18,000 night-vision goggles.
“Just after the Taliban takeover, the latest night-vision devices were sold at a scrap rate,” Raz Muhammad, a Pakistani weapons trader, was quoted by The Post.
The report quoted a Pakistan Army major, Zaheer Hassan, as saying that insurgents have paired night vision and thermal equipment with small drones to attack troops with more precision.
“The battle has become much more dangerous,” Hassan said, according to The Post.
Pakistan’s foreign office said this month that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio agreed during a telephonic conversation with Pakistan’s deputy prime minister on the need to resolve the issue of US Military equipment left behind in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has struggled to contain surging militancy in its western regions that border Afghanistan in recent years, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of sheltering and supporting militant groups that launch cross-border attacks. Afghan officials deny involvement and insist that Pakistan’s security issues are an internal matter of Islamabad.
PSL 2025: Explosive Farhan smashes century as Islamabad thump Peshawar by 102 runs
- Sahibzada Farhan smashes 106 runs from 52 balls, hitting 13 fours and five sixes in his innings
- Islamabad United’s Imad Wasim returns figures of 3/26, Shadab Khan 2/29, Ben Dwarshuis 2/23
ISLAMABAD: Defending champions Islamabad United defeated Peshawar Zalmi by a mammoth 102 runs on Monday, driven by an explosive century by right-handed batter Sahibzada Farhan as the two sides faced each other in their Pakistan Super League (PSL) 2025 clash at Rawalpindi.
United batted first, scoring an impressive 243/5 from their 20 overs. Their innings was led by opener Farhan, who smashed 106 runs from 52 balls, hitting 13 fours and five sixes. Colin Munro contributed with a quickfire 40 from 27 balls while Salman Ali Agha scored a 30-run knock from 15 balls.
Zalmi bowlers Hussain Talat and Azarri Joseph each grabbed two wickets.
“Credit goes to Sahibzada Farhan for his hard work behind the scenes,” United skipper Shadab Khan said at the post-match conference. “When you don’t perform, we will judge you as if you haven’t done the hard work. But he did play for Pakistan in and out for some time, he did the right stuff, and eventually it has come out.”
It was yet another disappointing day for Zalmi skipper Babar Azam, who was caught by Holder off a Ben Dwarshuis delivery after scoring only one run. In-form opener Saim Ayub failed to make a dent, falling for six runs while Mitchell Owen made only 10 before he was dismissed by Imad Wasim.
Only Zalmi middle-order batter Mohamamd Haris impressed, scoring 87 runs from 47 balls but the rest of the batters such as Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Talat and George Linde all fell cheaply to trigger a Zalmi batting collapse.
Former Karachi Kings captain Wasim was instrumental in Zalmi’s fall, returning figures of 3/26 from his four overs while Khan and Dwarshuis both took two wickets each. Holder and Naseem Shah each took a single wicket as Zalmi were bowled out for 141 in 18.2 overs.
Farhan was awarded the Player of the Match award.
Police recover bodies of 2 kidnapped constables in northwest Pakistan amid surging militancy
- Constables Hameed Shah, Ashraf Dotani were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen from their homes in South Waziristan district, say police
- In separate incident, seven laborers injured in bomb blast targeting under-construction building of Rescue 1122 in northwestern Tank district
PESHAWAR: The bodies of two kidnapped constables were recovered from a deserted area in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, a police spokesperson said, as the country struggles to contain surging militancy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.
Constables Hameed Shah and Ashraf Dotani were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in Wana town in South Waziristan district on Saturday, police spokesperson Habib Islam said. Members of the Dotani tribe chased the gunmen, trading fire with them. Three militants were killed while two, including a local tribesman and a girl, were injured during the clash.
“The martyred personnel were kidnapped two days ago from their homes in Tui Khula, a locality on the outskirts of Wana, the main town in the district,” Islam told Arab News.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the incident, but suspicion is likely to fall on the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) outfit or the Pakistani Taliban. The TTP has carried out some of the deadliest attacks against Pakistani law enforcers since 2007.
The banned unit has increased its attacks on Pakistani law enforcers since November 2022, when a fragile truce between the state and the TTP broke down. Pakistan blames neighboring Afghanistan for providing sanctuary to TTP militants, a charge Kabul vehemently denies.
In a separate incident, seven laborers were injured in the northwestern Tank district on Monday when a bomb blast targeted the under construction building of a prominent rescue emergency service, police said.
Tank police spokesperson Younas Khan said the explosion struck an under-construction Rescue 1122 building located in Wazirabad area in Tank.
Rescue 1122 teams responded quickly, shifting the injured to the District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital for medical treatment, Khan said. Following the incident, a large contingent of police and security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation to trace those responsible for the blast, he said.
Pakistan parliament adopts unanimous resolution against Israel’s ‘heinous wave of atrocities’ in Gaza
- Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar presents resolution seeking immediate Gaza ceasefire, resumption of aid to Palestinians
- Gaza’s health ministry says at least 1,574 Palestinians have been killed since Mar. 18 when Israel resumed military attacks
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s National Assembly on Monday adopted a unanimous resolution condemning Israel’s “heinous wave of atrocities” in Gaza, expressing solidarity with Palestinian citizens and demanding an immediate ceasefire in the territory, state-run media reported.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that at least 1,574 Palestinians have been killed since Mar. 18 when a shaky ceasefire between Hamas and Israel broke down, taking the overall death toll since the war began in October 2023 to 50,944.
The resolution was moved by Pakistan’s Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar during a session of the lower house of parliament. The resolution noted that the latest Israeli offensive has resulted in the killing of over 1500 Palestinians, rebuking the destruction of complete civil infrastructure in Gaza including houses, hospitals, schools and places of worship.
“The National Assembly on Monday adopted a unanimous resolution, once again strongly condemning the ongoing heinous wave of atrocities by the Zionist Israeli regime in Gaza,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported.
The National Assembly expressed “unwavering solidarity” with the people of Palestine, reaffirming their inalienable right to self-determination and an independent motherland.
The resolution also expressed dismay at the international community’s failure to halt Israeli aggression, calling urgently for an immediate, permanent and comprehensive ceasefire. It also demanded uninterrupted and sustainable humanitarian assistance to besieged and beleaguered Palestinians in the territory.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the entire Pakistani nation stands united when it comes to Palestine. He pointed out that Pakistan has a unique distinction on its passport, which does not allow its holders to travel to Israel.
Pakistan, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, has frequently criticized the Jewish state for its military operations in Gaza. Islamabad has also called for the resumption of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory and the need for a revival of negotiations leading to a two-state solution.
Islamabad consistently calls for an independent Palestinian state along the pre-1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Pakistan to vaccinate over 45 million children against polio in nationwide campaign in April
- Over 400,000 volunteers to participate in nationwide polio drive from Apr. 21-27, says health minister
- Stresses cooperation among federal, provincial governments and global partners to eliminate polio
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will vaccinate over 45 million children against poliovirus in April in its second nationwide campaign against the disease this year, Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal said on Monday, as Islamabad intensifies efforts to rid the country of the infection.
Polio is a paralyzing disease with no cure and multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine — along with completing the routine immunization schedule for children under five — are crucial to building immunity against the virus.
Pakistan, which has reported six polio cases so far in 2025, has planned three major vaccination campaigns in the first half of the year, with additional rounds scheduled for April and May.
“The second national polio campaign of the year is scheduled from Apr. 21 to 27 nationwide,” Kamal said while chairing a high-level meeting on polio eradication, which was attended by provincial health ministers.
“Over 400,000 trained polio workers will participate, aiming to administer polio vaccination drops to over 45 million children.”
Kamal lamented that Karachi’s sewage samples continued to test positive for poliovirus. The minister directed authorities to formulate a strategy for the nationwide polio campaign, highlighting that a “coordinated approach” was essential to completely eradicate the disease.
The minister stressed the importance of cooperation among federal and provincial governments, as well as international partners, to ensure the success of polio eradication efforts.
Pakistan’s polio program, launched in 1994, has faced persistent challenges including vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners who claim immunization is a foreign conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children or a guise for Western espionage. Militant groups have also repeatedly targeted and killed polio vaccination workers.
In 2024, Pakistan reported an alarming 74 polio cases. Along with Afghanistan, it remains one of the only two countries where polio is still endemic.
