04 June 2004	Friday	15 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

LAHORE, June 3: The Lahore High Court has converted the death penalty against Rehmat Shah Afridi into life-imprisonment in a narcotics-smuggling case.

A division bench of the Lahore High Court, comprising Justice Syed Tasaddaq Husain Jilani and Justice Saeed Akhtar, announced the decision in a short order soon after the proceedings began on Thursday.

The proprietor of The Frontier Post was awarded capital punishment by an anti-narcotics court on June 27, 2001, for selling marijuana. He submitted an appeal to the Lahore High Court which was taken up for hearing on a day-to-day basis on May 20.

The court dismissed the appeals of co-accused Abdul Maalik and Ansar Khan against their life-imprisonment, which was awarded to them by the same court. They were allegedly arrested by the Anti-Narcotics Force from a truck near Faisalabad with packets of the contraband on board.

The ANF record, presented in the court during the hearing, showed that the two were unaware of the presence of drug in the truck and the prosecution itself said they were not guilty of the offence.

Mr Afridi was sentenced to death by a Lahore anti-narcotics court on June 27, 2001, and the appeal against the decision filed with the Lahore High Court on June 30.

The high court held a preliminary hearing and it was after a period of two years and three months that the appeal was taken up in Oct 2003. Mr Afridi is serving his sentence in the Kot Lakhpat jail.

He was arrested from a local hotel on April 2, 1999. The prosecution alleged that the arrest was effected on the allegation that 20kg of marijuana had been recovered from his car parked in a local hotel.

Later, it was also alleged that another 600kg of the same narcotic was seized from a truck near Faisalabad on a tip-off from Mr Afridi during interrogation. The special judge of anti-narcotics court sentenced him to death on two counts on June 27, 2001.

Mr Afridi was also fined Rs2 billion on two counts: Rs1 billion for the alleged recovery of 20kg of marijuana from his car and another Rs1 billion for seizure of the drug from the truck.

Mr Afridi filed an appeal against the decision with the Lahore High Court three days later with the request that the conviction be set aside. He was represented in the court by Advocates Syed Ehsan Qadir Shah and Syed Hassam Qadir Shah.

The bench was reconstituted in March this year upon a reference to the chief justice after a member of the previous bench, Justice Mohammad Bilal Khan, expressed his inability to be party to the proceedings for personal reasons. Justice Bilal refused to sit on the bench because he had worked as a special prosecutor of the Anti-Narcotics Force.