SHC rejects five women’s appeals against life term in drugs case

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday dismissed the appeals of five female convicts against their life imprisonment sentences in a drugs case, upholding the trial court’s decision.

Appellants Khadija, Fahmida, Anees, Nazia and Husna had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Control of Narcotic Substances Court because they were caught with over 135 kilograms of charas on Hub River Road on July 22, 2016. According to the prosecution, the appellants had been arrested while they were travelling on Hub River Road and heading towards Karachi, and the police had recovered charas from their possession.

The appellants’ counsel said that his clients had been standing at a bus stop in Baldia Town, from where they took a lift from a pickup driver named Sheraz to reach their destination. The counsel said the women had been falsely implicated by the police, and all the witnesses had been police officials, whose testimonies could not be relied upon.

No evidence of the mobile location of the appellants had been submitted in court, and there had been contradictions in the prosecution witnesses’ statements, he added. The additional prosecutor general supported the impugned judgment, and said that there was no delay in the lodging of the FIR, while the prosecution witnesses had deposed corroborative evidence, and their evidence was reliable, so it could not be ignored. After the perusal of the evidence and hearing the counsel’s arguments, an SHC division bench comprising Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha and Justice Mrs Kausar Sultana Hussain said that all the prosecution witnesses had remained consistent while leading their respective evidences.

The bench said the record did not show any legal or factual defect in the findings of the trial court regarding the guilt of the appellants. The SHC said a huge quantity of charas had been recovered from the bags being carried by the appellants, and the recovery of the charas had been proved by the prosecution beyond any shadow of a doubt. The bench upheld the trial court’s judgment and maintained the life imprisonment sentences of the appellants.