LAHORE, March 17: A special division bench of the Lahore High Court is scheduled to take up on Thursday (today) the appeal of daily The Frontier Post proprietor Rehmat Shah Afridi against his death sentence.

Justices Syed Tasaddaq Husain Jilani and M. Bilal constituted the bench which was to take up the appeal. Justice Bilal expressed his inability to sit on the bench because he was the special prosecutor of the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) which was prosecuting Mr Afridi.

The appeal was referred to the chief justice on Oct 22 for the constitution of another bench. Justice Bilal has now been replaced by Justice Saeed Akhtar. An anti-narcotics court of Lahore had on June 27, 2001, awarded capital punishment to Mr Afridi on two counts, Rs2 billion fine on two counts, Rs1 billion for the alleged recovery of 20kg of marijuana from his car and another Rs1 billion for seizure of this drug from the truck.

Mr Afridi filed an appeal against his conviction with the Lahore High Court on June 30 which held a preliminary hearing. The appeal will be taken up on Thursday (today) after two years and three months.

The proprietor of The Frontier Post was arrested on April 2, 1999, from a local hotel on the allegation that 20kg of marijuana had been recovered from his car. Later, it was also alleged that another 600kg of marijuana was seized from a truck near Faisalabad on the indication of Mr Afridi during interrogation.