ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Thursday took up the pre-arrest bail petitions of federal minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin and Ali Musa Gilani, son of former premier Yousaf Raza Gilani.
Presenting Shahabuddin’s case before the court, his counsel Sardar Ishaq argued that the statements of the approvers in the case – namely Dr Rasheed Jumma and Rizwan Ahmed Khan – should be disregarded since they were not recorded according to the procedure laid down in section 337 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). He further contended that the affidavits submitted before court were concocted by Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) officials.
Meanwhile, Ali Musa’s counsel Dr Khalid Ranjha maintained that ANF officials had stretched provisions of the Control of Narcotic Substances Act (CNSA) while framing the FIR and that the reallocation of the ephedrine quota did not violate any law. He added that allegations pertaining to the reallocation of the quota had not been mentioned in the FIR.
Responding to Ranjha’s arguments, Justice Tariq Pervez observed that ANF officials may have stretched the definition of CNSA’s section 9-C in order to make the allocation of the ephedrine quota a violation of the law. At the same time, Justice Nasirul Mulk instructed ANF official to produce Lahore High Court’s (LHC) orders declaring ephedrine a controlled chemical before the bench, along with copies of the review against this judgment pending adjudication in LHC’s Rawalpindi bench.
Ranjha claimed his client had been drawn into a battle between the civil government and ANF. He asserted that ANF wanted to ridicule Ali Musa due to previous litigation between the force and the government headed by his father.
Ranjha’s arguments were under way when the court adjourned proceedings till tomorrow.
In a similar case, the bench dismissed ANF’s petition that seeks cancellation of post-arrest bail given by LHC to Sattar Sohrani, a co-accused in the case.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 12th, 2012.
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Very unfortunate. Influential people, even with serious allegations like drug paddling have never been punished in the past and even now will be able to get away without being punished. A sorry state of affairs.