SHC sets aside life term in drug case over legal infirmities

The Sindh High Court on Thursday set aside the life imprisonment sentence of a man in a drug case as the prosecution failed to prove charges.

Shafi was sentenced to life imprisonment by an additional district and sessions court of Malir for possessing 30 kilograms of charas in the SITE Superhighway area. According to the prosecution, a police party apprehended the appellant and seized 30 kilograms of charas, which had been concealed in his rickshaw.

The appellant’s counsel submitted that the prosecution had miserably failed to prove a huge quantity of narcotic had been recovered from the appellant. He submitted that no private witness of the locality was made a witness, which prima facie created a doubt about how the contraband had been seized. He said the appellant had no previous criminal record and requested the court to set aside the trial court’s order.

The additional prosecutor general supported the impugned judgment and requested the court to dismiss the appeal. A division bench comprising Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha and Justice Zulfiqar Ali Sangi, after hearing the arguments and perusal of the evidence of the case, observed that there were contradictions in the prosecution case which clearly indicated

that the complainant and mashir were not true eyewitness to the incident and no such incident of arrest and recovery of charas had occurred.

The court observed that mere heinousness of the charge and recovery of a huge quantity of the alleged contraband were no ground to convict the accused. The court observed that after the reassessment of material available in the case, it had been found that there were also a number of legal infirmities which had created a serious doubt about the prosecution’s case. It said the prosecution had failed to prove the case against the appellant beyond any reasonable doubt and set aside the trial court order. The court ordered release of the appellant if not required in other cases.