PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Friday issued a stay order stopping the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission from arresting a former professor of the University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar in connection with an inquiry related to his assets.

Justice Younas Taheem and Justice Mohammad Ghazanfar Khan suspended action on a KPEC call-up notice for the petitioner, Professor Fazle Khaliq, and asked the Ehtesab commissioner neither to arrest nor harass the petitioner.

The bench directed the peti-tioner to cooperate with the KPEC officials for inquiry under way about his assets.

It also issued notice to the KPEC`s director general on the matter and sought a reply from him.

Shabbir Hussain Gigyani, lawyer for the petitioner, said his client was a respectable and competent engineer and had served at the UET`s Civil Engineering Department for many years and that he had never remained a drawing and disbursement of ficer not had he ever released any cheque in any project of the university.

The lawyer said his client was not a public officeholder as there was no money at his disposal. He said earlier, the National Accountability Bureau had begun an inquiry against his client suspecting that he possessed assets which were disproportionate to the known sources of his income.

He said the petitioner laterfiled a petition against that inquiry and that during the pendency of that petition, the NAB had stated that the inquiry was closed as there was no evidence to prove the charge.

Mr Gigyani said after a federal agency had conducted an inquiry about the assets of his client, the KPEC had no authority to investigate the matter.

He said the KPEC Act, 2014 was clear on the issue that if a federalagencyhadtakencognisance of a matter the provincial agency had no authority tolookintoit.

REFERENCE FILED: The KPEC on Friday filed a reference with an Ehtesab court against former director general Qayash Bahadur and seven otherofhcials of the Directorate of Agriculture Extension accusing them of corruption and misuse of authority during the distribution of seeds under the Insaf Food Security Programme (IFSP)in 2015-16.

The reference was filed byadditional deputy prosecutor general Farooq Shah and investigation officer Hafiz Mohammad Anwar.

The commission claimed the suspects served as the heads of the department in different districts, including Tank, Mardan, Peshawar, Kohat, Haripur, Karak and Swabi.

It added that the suspects had distributed seeds among blueeyed persons against the prescribed rules and thus causing losses to the exchequer.

The commission claimed thousands of deserving farmers and cultivators were deprived of their due right in that manner.

In Jan, the high court had restrained the Ehtesab commission from arresting eight suspects, who had challenged the issuance of call-up notices to them.

The suspects had stated that the provincial government had begun the IFSP in 2015 underwhich in a meeting it was initially decided that seeds would be provided to growers having land measuring one to three acres.

They had stated that under the programme, a single bag of 50kg seed was provided to each of the growers.

Later, they claimed that another meeting decided that the seeds should be provide d to growers having up to 12 acres of land and that in accordance with the said decisions, the petitioners had distributed seeds among growers.

The suspects claimed that another meeting of the agriculture department decided to revert to provision of seeds to growers having up to three acres of land but neither the minutes of the meeting were approved nor was it conveyed to relevant officials in different districts.

They claimed that the KPEC was not clear about what offence was committed by them.