Ex-NHA officials, others acquitted
Karachi
The Court of Additional District and Sessions Judge (West), Ikramuddin, on Monday acquitted the former chairman of the National Highway Authority (NHA), Chaudhry Altaf Ahmed, and eight other accused in the Shershah bridge case.
The court took this decision while exercising its powers under Section 265-K that empowered the trial court to free any of the accused at any stage of the trial when it finds the same to be innocent.
All the accused, former NHA chairmen, Chaudhry Altaf Ahmed and Farrukh Javed, former general manager, Tehseenul Haque, members of operation, plant and construction, Raja Nausherwan, Mohammad Yousuf Barakzai, Syed Najmul Hasan, and the directors of the construction company, Engineering Consultants International Private Limited, Zaheer Mirza, Khalid Mirza and Naveed Mirza, were alleged to have been involved in providing substandard material and other poor technical assistance that led to the collapse of a part of the then newly-constructed Northern Bypass Bridge in Shershah on September 9, 2007.
Five people had died and fourteen sustained injuries while six cars were also destroyed in the collapse of a section of the one-kilometre-long bridge.Ironically, the bridge had been inaugurated by the then president, Pervez Musharraf, only a few days before a section of the bridge collapsed.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan had also taken notice of the incident, ordering in 2010 to lodge a case against the accused. In March 2010, a Senate committee had also ordered an inquiry into the bridge’s collapse, calling for strict action against the NHA members and other officials responsible in the bridge’s construction.
On April 8, the Supreme Court had ordered a fresh case against the contractors and the then NHA officials involved in the construction. It had also directed the then government to compensate the heirs of the deceased as well as the injured.
The federal government had also been directed to place the suspects on the Exit Control List.The case against the accused was registered under Sections 322, 181, 421, 427 and 337-H of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
However, a report was submitted before the court during the trial, saying that an investigation into the matter headed by the then Deputy Inspector General of Police had found the accused to be innocent.
The accused then moved an application before the trial court to declare them as innocent on the basis of the findings of the report, but the application had been rejected by the court.Two of the accused, Yousuf Barakzai and Raja Nausherwan, had later taken the plea that they had nothing to do with the matter of construction of the bridge directly, and there was no proof of their involvement in the case.
The trial court, allowing the plea of Yousuf Barakzai, had freed him, but it had rejected the plea of the other accused. Raja Nausherwan had then approached the Sindh High Court (being an appellate court) and prayed to the court to free him.
The appellate court considered the arguments presented on behalf of Raja Nausherwan and acquitted him.However, now as the latest applications on behalf of all the accused were moved, the court entertained them, and after hearing arguments on behalf of the accused, found it fit to acquit them before the conclusion of the trial as no sound evidence was presented before the court that could have involved the former officials of the NHA and others in the death of five people owing to the collapse of the bridge.The trial had earlier been conducted by the then presiding officer, Gulshan Ara Chandio, before whom the charges were framed.
