Shahid Ashraf

Commodore Shahid Ashraf (Urdu: شاہد اشرف b 1947), is a retired one-star rank admiral in the Pakistan Navy and a former spy whose role was central in a massive military scandal took place during the second administration of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

He was accused to receiving monetary corruption when he led the Naval Intelligence office under the staff of Adm. Mansurul Haq, the Chief of Naval Staff from 1994 until 1997. He was subsequently court-martial but his matter was later subjected to cover-up by the Pakistani military under the Chairman joint chiefs General Pervez Musharraf in 1999.

Biography
Shahid Ashraf was born in 1947, and joined the Navy in 1964. He saw the military actions during the second war in 1965 and third war in 1971 with India, respectively.

In 1995, Captain Ashraf was appointed in the Navy NHQ and was appointed as the Hydrographer of the Navy Hydrographic Department under then-Adm. Mansurul Haq, the Chief of Naval Staff.

In 1996, Capt. Ashraf was promoted to one-star rank promotion, and was subsequently appointed as the Director-General of the Naval Intelligence (DGNI).

During this time, Cdre. Ashraf was briefed by the Naval Intelligence led by Rear-Admiral Javed Iqbal on Navy receiving the massive illegal financial credits from French Navy under the auspicious of the Adm. Mansurul Haq. Cdre. Ashraf later confronted the Adm. Mansurul Haq but joined the later when Adm. Mansurul Haq subsequently pressure him, according to the officials inquiries of the Naval Intelligence. In 1997, Cdre. Ashraf handed over the command of the Naval Intelligence to Rear-Admiral Tanvir Ahmed and departed to the United Kingdom to attend the war course at the Royal College of Defence Studies in Great Britain.

In 1997, Rear-Admiral Tanvir Ahmed eventually exposed the military scandal after his led the arrests of Adm. Mansurul Haq and later winding up his operation when he requested the government to recall Cdre. Ashraf from his overseas studies. The Navy JAG prosecution leveled its charges on Cdre. Ashraf of receiving ₨. 1.5 million when he faced the court martial in Zafar Naval base in Islamabad. In 1998, Cdre. Ashraf, alongside with Capt. Liaquat Ali Malik and Capt. Z.U. Alvi, pleaded guilty of taking the bribes and was subjected to imprisonment for nearly seven years.

However, Cdre. Ashraf maintained in the court martial inquiries that he sought the permission of leading towards catching the foreign agent who was giving bribe money to naval officers but was not allowed to do so by the Navy NHQ.

His case findings were later subjected to the military cover-up by Chairman joint chiefs General Pervez Musharraf in 2000 from the inquiries of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

In 2010, Ashraf later blamed the outcomes of the scandals on successive government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and senior naval officers in the Navy NHQ but declined to comment his role in receiving ₨. 1.5 million. He claimed that the corruption charges leveled up on Bhutto-Zardari family, were politically motivated when Sharif family being the most beneficiaries of the Agosta submarine deals.