PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday restrained the National Accountability Bureau, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, from arresting and summoning five serving and former senior police ofñcers in a high proñle case of alleged embezzlement in procurement of weapons for the police department.

A single-member bench judge, Roohul Amin Khan, issued a notice to the director general of NAB, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, asking him to explain the position on the notices issued to the suspects for appear before the bureau for probe.

It asked him not to take any action against the six officers till Aug 24, the next hearing into their petitions.

The six officers, including then commandant of Frontier Constabulary (FC) Abdul Majeed Marwat, then additional IGPOperation (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) Abdul Latif Ghandapur (now retired), DIG at Central Police Office (CPO) Sajid Ali Khan, then DIG Headquarters Peshawar Mohammad Salman, then AIG (Establishment) at CPO Kashif Alam and then DIG (telecommunications) Sadiq Kamal Orakzai, have filed petitions against the issuance of `call-up notices` to them by the NAB asking them to appear and join investigation regarding the said weapons procurement case.

Names of the petitioners were mentioned by the NAB in a reference filed before the accountability court, but the court had not summoned them for framing of charges observing that their roles had not been spelt out in the reference.

The order of the accountability court was also upheld by the high court.

The said reference was filed by the NAB last year against 10 persons including the present petitioners.

The prime suspect in the case, Malik Naveed Khan, who was then the provincial police officer, and a budget officer of the police, Jawed Khan, have been facing trial before the accountability court.

Another suspect, Amir Ghazan Khan, who is brother of former Khyber PakhtunkhwaChief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti, was acquitted by the court whereas Ghazan`s brother-in-law Raza Ali was set free af ter his plea bargain application was accepted by the NAB.

Abdul Samad Khan, Barrister Mudassir Amir, Syed Arshad Ali, Aamir Jawed and Anwarul Haq, lawyer for the petitioners, said their clients had received call-up notices from the NAB and they apprehend that their arrest warrants might also have been issued.

They said the act of NAB was based on mala fide intentions as it had already lost cases before the accountability court, high court and Supreme Court regarding the nonsummoning of the petitioners by the accountability court for indicting them in the said case.

According to the lawyers, the accountability court had in March 2014 declined to summon the six police officers citing the failure of NAB, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to explain their offence as major reason.

On Nov 24, it had rejected an application of NAB and stuck to its earlier decision of not summoning the six officials.

Later, the high court had dismissed the NAB petition against the verdict.