KARACHI: A sessions court on Wednesday reserved its order to be pronounced on Friday (tomorrow) on the post-arrest bail application of the Karsaz traffic accident suspect in a drug case.

Suspect Natasha Danish had challenged the dismissal of her bail order by a judicial magistrate in the drug case.

On Wednesday, Additional District and Sessions Judge (East) Shahid Ali Memon took up the bail application moved by the suspect, through her counsel Aamir Mansoob Qureshi.

After hearing arguments from the defence counsel and the state prosecutor, the court reserved its decision.

During the hearing, the defence counsel submitted that in the drug case, the FIR was lodged based on the alleged chemical examiner report, which showed the presence of methamphetamine (ice) in only the urine sample of the applicant.

He argued that his client was falsely implicated under Section 11 of the Prohibition (Enforcement of Hadd) Order 1979, which is “drinking liable to tazir”, after taking legal opinion from the concerned DSP legal.

“It seems the DSP legal hasn’t even read the law,” he said, adding that methamphetamine was mentioned for the first time in the Control of Narcotics Substance (Sindh Amendment) Act, 2021.

He submitted that “there is no section in this law that specifically applies to the consumption of ice”.

He added that if no punishment was provided for such offences, then Section 16 (punishment for offences for which no punishment is provided) of the Control of Narcotic Substances Act, 1997, would apply, stipulating a punishment of one-year imprisonment or a fine of Rs5,000.

The counsel argued that, as a matter of principle, only one case should be registered for a single incident.

He added that Section 100 (driving while under the influence of drink or drugs) of the Provincial Motor Vehicles Ordinance 1965 had already been included in the main case, in which the sessions court had already granted his client bail.

On the other hand, state prosecutor Syed Khursheed Abbas Bukhari opposed the bail application, arguing that the case was still under investigation and the final charge sheet had yet to be submitted to the court.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2024