PPP leaders condemned Khursheed Shah arrest

Khursheed Shah1

Khursheed Shah1

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has arrested Pakistan Peoples Party’s senior leader Khursheed Shah on Wednesday.
According to a brief statement issued by the accountability watchdog, he was taken into custody by the bureau’s Sukkur chapter in an assets beyond means case. He will be presented before the relevant accountability court in Sukkur for remand today Thursday.
The PPP stalwart was arrested in a joint operation by NAB’s Rawalpindi and Sukkur chapters. Shah was taken away by nearly 20 personnel of NAB and police during a raid at his Islamabad residence, the domestic staff at his house.
They claimed that the NAB and police personnel had neither allowed any discussion nor let the servants take out their mobile phones before they took Shah away with them.
Reacting to the development, PPP senior leader Sherry Rehman said Shah, an MNA, was arrested while the National Assembly session was underway without intimating the NA speaker to “further your condemnable objectives”.
“On one hand we say that the law of jungle is prevailing in the world through which Kashmir is being subjected to state oppression; it appears that something similar is happening here.”
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, another PPP leader, termed Shah’s arrest a “very wrong step” on the part of the government. “Had Khursheed Shah run away from the country? Had to refused to attend any inquiry against him?” he questioned. He added that the arrest will harm the expression of unity that is currently required of the nation.
Born in 1952, Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah hails from Sindh’s Sukkur region, which he went on to represent as an MPA and later as MNA. He studied at Sukkur’s Islamia College and obtained the degrees of MA and LLB.
He was elected to the Sindh Assembly in 1988 during which he was made a provincial minister holding a wide range of portfolios – education, import and transport being some of them. He made his way to the parliament in 1990.
Shah also served as a federal minister for education in 1993, during slain PPP leader, Benazir Bhutto’s second government. In 2008, he was elected from NA-199 (Sukkur cum Shikarpur-II), PPP and became minister for labour and human resources. He was made the federal minister for religious affairs in 2010. In 2013, he was elected from NA-199 (Sukkur-cum-Shikarpur-II), PPP and became the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly.

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