Ephedrine case: Court rejects Abbasi’s acquittal plea

Formal indictment likely on September 2

RAWALPINDI: A Control of Narcotics Substances (CNS) court on Thursday rejected an acquittal application filed by Hanif Abbasi, one of the principal accused in the ephedrine case.

CNS Judge Akhtar Bahadur rejected the acquittal application and deferred the formal indictment till September 2.  The court also ordered all witnesses in the case to appear in the next hearing.

On August 25, Abbasi submitted an application requesting acquittal under section 265.

During the course of the hearing, the counsel for Abbasi argued that his client was innocent and that a “fabricated” and “politically-motivated” case had been registered against him. The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF), however, opposed the acquittal application, arguing that the ANF had previously submitted a charge-sheet in court against Abbasi.

Abbasi is accused of misappropriating 500kg of the controlled substance ephedrine in 2010, and then allegedly selling it to narcotics smugglers.

The charge-sheet also included the statements of two officials of Arafaat Traders, a Karachi-based pharmaceuticals distributor, to whom Abbasi claimed to have supplied 11,000 ephedrine-containing tablets which would account for the quota. The ANF registered the case against the co-accused in June 2012. Abbasi obtained bail from the Lahore High Court Rawalpindi bench in November 2012.

Earlier, in February 2012, the Supreme Court pointed out political involvement in the alleged illegal allocation of 9,000 kg of ephedrine to two pharmaceutical companies --- Berlix and Danas --- and its conversion for sale in the local market.

Former federal minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin and Ali Musa Gillani, the son of former premier Yousaf Raza Gillani, were also involved in the case. Shahabuddin had already filed an application with the CNS court requesting his acquittal. The court will take up his application on September 9.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2014.