ISLAMABAD, 16 June 2004 — An anti-corruption court yesterday ordered a former Pakistani government minister jailed for three years and disqualified him from public office for 10 years for abusing authority and tax evasion, his lawyer said.
The sentence against Nawaz Khokhar was delivered by the court in Lahore, capital of Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, lawyer Manzoor Malik said.
Khokhar was a minister for science in the 1990s and deputy speaker of Parliament under former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1993-96.
He was convicted of abusing his position to avoid paying 1.8 million rupees ($31,000) in tax on a purchase of land near the capital, Islamabad, in 1996, Malik said.
Judge Karamat Ali Shah also ordered Khokhar to pay the outstanding tax.
Khokhar did not attend yesterday’s hearing and his whereabouts were unclear. He will appeal the sentence and seek bail to avoid arrest, the lawyer said.
Pakistan, India Hold First Anti-Drug Smuggling Talks in Seven Years
Pakistan and India held talks yesterday on fighting drug smuggling across their border, resuming a once-regular contact that had been suspended for seven years, an official said. The two-day talks in Islamabad between narcotics control officials are part of a 1994 bilateral agreement to hold twice-yearly meetings and cooperate in fighting drugs, said Khalid Latif Chaudhry, chief of the Pakistan delegation.
The last time they met was in 1997, he said.
