KARACHI: An anti-corruption court on Tuesday returned an investigation report in which a senior official of the Sindh education department and others were left out and directed the investigation officer to re-investigate the case.

In February, the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) had nominated director-schools (Karachi) Abdul Wahab Abbasi and other of ficials in a case pertaining to allegedly preparing fake documents for appointment and retirement of ghost employees and misappropria-tion of millions of rupees in the name of ghost employees` pension in 2014.

IO Aijaz Abbasi recently submitted through prosecutor a final investigation report under Section 173 of the criminal procedure code in which he chargesheeted former district officer-education Sheedi Brohi, then DDO-Saddar Ghulam Rasool Bhund and Hira Lal, a former school headmaster, while four others including two officials of the accountant general office were shown absconders.

The IO did not charge-sheet the then director-schools (BPS-20) Wahab Abbasi, his assistant Syed SagheerWasti, Idrees, senior clerk Muhammad Fakhar and account officer at AG of fice Shuja Ahmed for lack of evidence.

However, prosecutor Arif Siati submitted the report in court with a scrutiny note stating that the IO did not properly collect and consider the evidence since the previous IO had seized a sufficient original record in the presence of a judicial magistrate.

He added that the IO had simply mentioned that he left out hve suspects for lack of evidence.

After examining the investigation report and the scrutiny note, Judge Gulshan Ara Chandio of the SpecialProvincial Anti-Corruption Court returned the report to the IO for a fresh investigation and asked him to submit it on the next hearing.

The court also directed the IO to remove the basic defects from primary evidence and obtain the opinion of handwriting and forensic experts regarding the age of seized papers and ink.

The interim investigation report was Kled by the ñrst IO of the case, Saeed Rind, in March who charge-sheeted suspect Abbasi and three others.

The prosecution said that the accused persons had fraudulently prepared ser-vice books and other documents for fake employees with back dates.

A case was registered as a result of a raid and inquiry against the suspects under Sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant or by banker, merchant), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.) 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471(using as genuine a forged document) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 5 (2) of the Prevention of AntiCorruption Act, 1947 at the ACE police station.