KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has set aside life imprisonment handed down to two men by a trial court in a drug peddling case.

A sessions/model court Malir had sentenced Mohammad Hasan and Mohammad Abbas to life in prison in May last year for transporting over 21 kilogrammes of hashish in a bus on the main Superhighway within the remit of the Sachal police station in October 2020.

Both convicts, through their counsel, impugned the conviction before the SHC and after hearing both sides and examining the record and proceedings, a division bench headed by Justice K. K. Agha allowed the appeals and exonerated them.

The bench in its judgement stated that in narcotic cases, one of the most crucial aspects for the prosecution was to prove safe custody of contraband from time of recovery until the time it was sent for a chemical examination.

In this case, the appellants were arrested by police on Oct 11 and narcotic was recovered from a secret cavity of the bus as Hasan was allegedly the driver of bus while Abbas was a passenger, it added.

The bench further observed that initially, hashish remained with a policeman/prosecution witness and then handed over to the senior investigation officer who allegedly kept it at the malkhana.

However, it noted that the in charge of malkhana was not examined by the prosecution to prove safe custody of the narcotic and as such it was unclear where the contraband was kept before it was taken for chemical examination on Oct 12.

“Thus based on the particular facts and circumstances of the case, we find that the prosecution has not been able to prove safe custody of the narcotic from the time when it was recovered from the appellants till the time when the same was sent for chemical examination and as such the chemical report is of no value to the prosecution in proving the recovered narcotic,” it added.

While referring to a judgement of apex court, the bench said that even otherwise if safe custody of narcotic had been proved, the same was of no evidentiary value since the chemical report was not put to the appellants at the time of recording their statements under Section 342 (power to examine the accused) of the criminal procedure code before the trial court and as such the same cannot be used to convict them.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2022