Tayyaba Gul, the victim of alleged sexual harassment by the former National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman, Justice (r) Javed Iqbal, on the occasion, told the PAC that she was asked by Iqbal to remain silent and not to disclose her ordeal to anybody.
“I was not listened to at any forum,” she said, adding, “As many as 40 FIRs were registered against me and I was also nominated in a NAB reference of worth Rs20 million.”
“DG NAB Saleem Shahzad stripped me naked and filmed it,” Tayyaba said, adding that even her name was put on the Exit Control List (ECL).
Tayyaba also revealed that the former watchdog head had threatened her with ‘dire consequences’.
“Javed Iqbal would tell me that he will destroy my life within a minute,” Tayyaba told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
“My number was written on the request filed for the recovery of a missing person, and he [Iqbal] kept calling me time and again,” she said, recalling that Iqbal used to tell her that if she did not respond, no meeting would be held.
She went on to allege that her husband and she were arrested on the direction of the former chairman of NAB. “I was arrested by male officers and cannot even share the barbarity that I endured during the car ride,” she narrated.
The woman further said that former principal secretary Azam Khan and Tahir A. Khan, owner of a private TV channel, summoned me and asked me to hand over these videos to them.
She played all her objectionable audios and videos at the meeting so that those in attendance could see for themselves the level of sexual harassment she had to endure.
PAC Chairman Noor Alam Khan, on the occasion, requested Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to order the removal of the former NAB chairman from his current post and that he be not reinstated unless the inquiry into harassment charges against him was complete. “We will summon him at the next meeting,” he said, and warned Javed Iqbal of issuing his arrest warrants if next time he did not show up.
The PAC chairman, on the occasion, also ordered the NAB to initiate an inquiry against its former chairman, and said that both these officials, NAB DG and ex-chairman of the bureau would be summoned after Eidul Azha.
Commenting on her intention behind making the video, she said: “I recorded Iqbal because he was a very powerful official and I wanted to expose him.”