PESHAWAR: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Wednesday arrested former Inspector General of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa Police Malik Naveed in billions of rupees weapons scam and would be produced for physical remand before the Accountability Court on Thursday.

According to the NAB KPK official release issue by deputy director media, the former police chief Malik Naveed has been arrested for a weapons scam case in which he had allegedly siphoned off billions of rupees.

The NAB release said that the inquiry committee, after a probe, had found that gross violation of procurement rules were committed by the purchase committee in awarding tenders to favoured contractors who had no previous experience of supplying weapons and security equipment.

Earlier NAB had also arrested budget officer Javed Khan and the supplier Arshad Majeed in the scam.

The NAB inquiry has also revealed that a number of KPK police officers and officials were allegedly involved in massive corruption and irregularities in procurement of weapons, equipment and vehicles in 2008-09 by violating government rules and thus causing huge loss to the exchequer.

To equip the KPK police in fighting terrorism and to control law and order, the provincial government had released Rs7 billion in 2008-10 for purchase of weapons, vehicles and other equipment.

Sources say that most of the equipment and weapons later turned out to be substandard and there are also reports that some politicians and their advisors in the former ANP-PPP coalition government were also allegedly involved in the scam and are likely to face the music.

The contractor Arshad Majeed had turned approver in the case and had told the court about the alleged kickbacks received by various government functionaries in the case.

NAB has also recovered about R6 crore and weapons from the house of budget officer Javed Khan after his arrest.