ISLAMABAD: The prosecution of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has excluded members of the Joint Investigation Team except JIT head Wajid Zia from its list of 28 witnesses against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in the assets reference.

It appears that the prosecution does not want to bring the representatives of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Military Intelligence, NAB, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistanand State Bank of Pakistan into the witness box.

NAB had declared the JIT report an integral part of the reference filed against Mr Dar.

The JIT comprised Wajid Zia of the Federal Investigation Agency, Brigadier Kamran Khurshid of the MI, retired Brigadier Noman Saeed of the ISI, Irf an Naeem Mangi of NAB, Amer Aziz of the SBP and Bilal Rasool of the SECP.

According to Amjad Pervez, counsel for Mr Dar, in case the prosecution did not bring all the six JIT members to the witness box, it could not use the JIT report even as a fact-finding report against the finance minister.

The legal experts said NAB did not want to bring the JIT members, especially the of ficials of spy agencies, into the witness box where they would be subject to `indiscriminate`cross-exam-ination by the defence counsel.

Sources privy to the development said that spy agencies were also not interested in inclusion of their senior officials in the list of prosecution witnesses.

The witnesses included Wajid Zia, Additional Director General of the FIA; Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan, Commissioner, Inland Revenue; Saeed Ahmed Khan, Deputy Director of the Election Commission of Pakistan; Wasif Hussain, Deputy Secretary, Cabinet Division; Qamar Zaman, Director, Ministry of Commerce; Sher Dil Khan, Director Budget, National Assembly; Shahid Aziz of the National Investment Trust; Mohammad Naeed, Excise and Taxation Officer; Tariq Javed of Al-Baraka Bank; Abdul Rahman Gondal of Allied Bank; Faisal Shahzad of Habib Metropolitan Bank; Masoodul Ghani of Habib Bank;Azeem Khan of Bank Al-Falah; Mirza Faizur Rehman of the Lahore Development Authority; Niaz Subhani of ETO Office; Ali Akbar Bhinder, Assistant Commissioner; Syed Qaboos Aziz of the National Database and Registration Authority; Inamul Haq of Al-Falah Cooperative Housing Society; Azhar Hussain, District Officer Industries; and Ishtiaq Ali of Bank Al-Falah.

The remaining witnesses Shakeel Anjum Nagra, Umar Daraz Gondal, Zafar Iqbal Muf ti, Adeel Akhtar, Zavar Manzoor, Iqbal Hassan, Obaid Simon and Nadir Abbasiare from NAB.

In the reference against Mr Dar, NAB claims that `the accused has acquired assets and pecuniary interests / resources in his own name and / or in the name of his dependants of an approximate amount of Rs831.678 million (approx)`.The reference alleged that the asset was `disproportionate to his known sources of income for which he could not reasonably account for`.

NAB, however, termed the reference `interim` since it was based on the `material collected by the JIT, FIA and NAB till date` and said that it reserved the right to file a supplementary reference.

According to the reference, it is yet to establish any role of the incumbent chief executive officer of the National Bank of Pakistan `in aiding and abetting the accused (Ishaq Dar) in the acquisition of the stated properties`.

The accountability court indicted Mr Dar on Sept 27.

The court will resume trial proceedings on Oct 4 when it will record the statements of two prosecution witnesses it has already summoned on Sept 27.