Man convicted a year ago acquitted

The trial had continued for 11 years

LAHORE: A man convicted in a narcotics case in 2014 was on Friday acquitted by Lahore High Court. The judgment stated that the prosecution had been unable to substantiate charges brought against the appellant, Shahid Butt.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Advocate Muhammad Qasim, the appellant’s counsel, said his client had been wrongly convicted of possessing 10.5-kilogramme raw opium. He said the ADSJ had sentenced him to five-year imprisonment. The trial had started in 2003 and continued for 11 years, he added.

In the FIR registered against Butt, the Akbari Gate police had stated that he was arrested in a raid carried out at a shop in the area. It said the substance recovered from the appellant’s possession was found to be raw opium.

Later, the appellant had been indicted by a trial court under Section 9/C of the Control of Narcotic Substances Act 1997 to which he pleaded not guilty.

In his statement at the trial court, Butt had stated that a sub inspector had implicated in the case to punish him for refusing to continue paying extortion money to him. He said he had nothing to do with the shop mentioned in the FIR.  However, the trial court had convicted him, observing that he had neither produced any evidence in his defence nor taken the stand himself as a witness in the case.

During proceedings of the appeal at the Lahore High Court, Butt’s counsel submitted that the raid had apparently taken place in broad daylight in a thickly populated commercial area (Akbari Mandi) of the city. Yet, he said not a single civilian had been mentioned among prosecution witnesses.

Further, the counsel said that the police had failed to establish his client as either the owner or the tenant of the shop identified in the FIR. He said it was unlikely that another shopkeeper would let a stranger sell drugs at his shop.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2015.