26 June 2004	Saturday	07 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

PESHAWAR, June 25: Additional District and Sessions judge Shehbar Khan on Friday acquitted a Muttahida Majlis-i- Amal MPA Akhter Nawaz and two former police officers in a case of drug trafficking.

The court ruled that the prosecution could not prove its case against the accused.

Apart from Mr Nawaz, the other two accused in the case were former policemen Mirdas Khan and Musharraf Khan.

The MPA was already on bail which was granted to him after his arrest in 1999. He was not an MPA at that time. He got elected in the Oct 2002 general elections from Haripur as an independent candidate and joined the JUP soon after the election.

Mr Khan was charged along with the two policemen in an FIR registered with East Cantonment Police Station on June 21, 1999. The three of them were charged with drug trafficking. The policemen - Mirdas Khan and Musharraf Khan - were later on sacked from service by the police department.

Defence counsel Mian Abdul Fayyaz and Sikander Khan contended that the defendants could not be convicted on basis of hearsay. They argued that no recovery of narcotics had taken place from any of the three accused. They added that none of the accused had recorded any confessional statement before any court of law.

The issue had surfaced in 1999 when the two constables were travelling in an official car of the police department bearing Registration No NWFP 2005 Pesh A and it met an accident near Hassanabdal. The vehicle was damaged and was taken into custody by the police there.

The NWFP police started an inquiry as the car was not on official duty. The two policemen allegedly claimed that they used to smuggle heroin in the official police vehicle to Haripur where they hand over the consignment to Akhter Nawaz, who hails from Haripur.

They claimed that they had smuggled heroin in the official car nine or 10 times and the consignment in fact belonged to Mr Nawaz.

On the basis of their statements arrested them.