Earlier, the prime minister, while taking notice of the alleged corruption in the affairs of HDC Rabies and Tetanus Toxoid vaccines production unit situated within the premises of NIH, had sought a detailed report from the health ministry.

"The Prime Minister Secretariat has since desired that NAB authorities may be requested to expedite the inquiry/action taken into the matter. Accordingly it is requested that the latest position of the case may be intimated to the health ministry for onward submission to Prime Minister's Secretariat," said a direction issued from the secretariat.

"Yes we are moving a file to NAB in this regard," a senior health official said. A departmental inquiry against the senior scientific officer had recommended to forward the case of the accused to the health ministry to dismiss him from the job. Instead of implementation of the recommendation, the inquiry report was shelved for years without any action on it.

The issue surfaced again when the accused was selected by the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) as director, National Control Laboratory (NCL), in BPS-19 to overlook the entire vaccine production facilities at the NIH.

The 1999 inquiry report had held that despite being officer in charge of HDS laboratory for more than 12 years, the accused wasted more than Rs40 million by purchasing items which were not required and never used.

The report had declared the officer responsible for the failure of the HDC and TT vaccine production projects and therefore guilty of misconduct, corruption and inefficiency and had suggested to implicate three more senior officers for their criminal negligence and silence during this entire episode.

The four-member inquiry committee in its findings had also stated that the said officer had failed to produce even five per cent of the HDC production target of 100,000 doses per year.

The report suggested that the officer mishandled a number of pieces of expensive equipment in the Tetanus Toxoid (T.T) Laboratory causing damage and loss of millions of rupees to the national exchequer by his negligence and inefficiency.

The officer had also committed a serious irregularity by wrongfully signing an inspection note knowingly well that the items in question were rejected 17 months earlier by the officer who had indented for these exhaust units.

The committee had accused the officer for mishandling sophisticated expensive machinery, due to which, a major portion of instruments has gone out of order like ultracentrifuge, boilers, pumps, cold room machine, aircondition plants, fermenters, water treatment plants and hot air oven.

In addition to these, many other machines were lying out of order and a few were repaired by private sources, costing Rs3.2 million. The officer also unnecessarily purchased a new rotor worth Rs2.8 million for ultra centrifuge, when the old one was functional and under-utilized because production had already stopped. The new one has not been utilized for the last many years.

The officer even dislocated the fermenter, without taking any expert advice as he did not possess engineering expertise to carry out this change. The officer also failed to hand over important documents essential for T.T vaccine production at the time of handing over the charge to the next officer in charge.

The inquiry report said the officer also cleared the inspection note regarding dust exhaust units in connivance with the contractor concerned despite the fact that the same were already rejected by the respective officer in charge of ORS production unit.

It said the officer cheated the administration by claiming to be an MPhil degree holder at the time of publication of seniority list for the promotion of the officers, while in fact he had neither been issued a Non-Objection Certificate (NOC) for MPhil studies nor could he produce any degree before the inquiry committee.