Pak's anti-corruption body grills Nawaz Sharif in 33-yr-old land case

An anti-corruption body in Pakistan on Tuesday grilled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in jail in a 33-year-old case related to an illegal land allotment allegedly by him. Sharif, 69, has been serving a seven-year prison term at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore since December 24, 2018, when an accountability court convicted him in one of the three corruption cases filed in the wake of the apex court's July 28, 2017 order in Panama Papers case.

According to an official of the Punjab Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE), its team quizzed Sharif for about an hour at the Kot Lakhpat jail for his role in the case pertaining to illegal allotment of land in Pakpattan district of Punjab, some 250-km from Lahore. The official said Sharif couldn't satisfy the investigators.

"When the investigators asked him if he gave an advertisement in the newspaper regarding the allotment, he told them that it was the three-decade old case and he remembered nothing about it. He said he needed time to consult his legal team to reply their queries," the official said. Sharif, being the chief minister of Punjab province in 1986, is accused of allotting over 14,000 Kanal government land to an individual, Dewan Ghulam Qutab, allegedly in violation of a Lahore High Court (LHC) order.

Sharif and his family have denied any wrongdoing and allege that the corruption cases against them were politically motivated.