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LAHORE, Nov 24: A special court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed on behalf of Asif Ali Zardari seeking a review of its earlier decision of issuing warrants for his arrest. The court said in the order that the accused was not allowed exemption from attending proceedings for three months but for the day the medical certificate was submitted.
The dismissal of the petition means that Mr Zardari will have to appear in the court on Dec 13, the date of hearing of the drug case. The court will follow the procedure of declaring him a proclaimed offender in case he fails to attend proceedings.
The court said the accused had not appeared on July 23 when the case was transferred to this court. On an application moved by his counsel, he was exempted from personal attendance for that day.
Later, Mr Zardari was exempted from appearance on Sept 9, Oct 10 and Nov 12 on production of a medical certificate.
It said Mr Zardari was to appear in the court on all dates fixed for the hearing of the case. The contention that he was exempted from appearance from Aug 31 to Nov 30 was misconceived and there was no justification for recalling the order of issuance of warrants.
Mr Zardari is facing charges of drug trafficking along with co-accused Arif Baloch, now serving a prison term in another case, Fauzi Ali Kazmi, Dr Zulfiqar Ali Mirza, Ayub Afridi, Anwar Khattak and Shorang Khan. The Qila Gujjar Singh police registered the case in 1997.
However, the ANF had not recovered any drugs and could not produce any material evidence to substantiate the allegation.
One of the co-accused, Shorang Khan, has died of cancer.
ANOMALY: A division bench of the Lahore High Court has pointed out to a major anomaly in a criminal case in which police submitted chargesheet to the trial court against two accused separately in the same FIR.
The court has sought an opinion from assistant advocate-general Tahir Gondal as to whether both the accused should be proceeded against or one of them absolved of the charges and dropped.
The Satiana Road police of Faisalabad registered a case against Dr Mohammad Ashraf charging him with possessing 70kg poppy straw. He was booked under Section 9-C of the Control of Narcotics Substance Act. The police subsequently submitted in July 2002 the chargesheet before a special court.
The police submitted another chargesheet before the same court in which Dr Ashraf was declared innocent, and the same allegation was imposed on Ejaz Ahmad. The police said Dr Ashraf was involved inadvertently whereas Ejaz was the actual accused.
Ejaz moved the special court through a petition stating that he was implicated in the case. The court dismissed his plea. Subsequently, he moved the LHC in an appeal seeking his acquittal.
The court has sought the record of the case with instructions to the AAG to place before the court propositions to proceed in the appeal.
