ISLAMABAD, Dec 29: A detailed Supreme Court order on granting bail to PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari said that no evidence was available on record to indicate that Mr Zardari had actually paid customs duty and other charges on the import of a BMW car.

There was also no evidence or enough to decline bail to Asif Zardari, said a seven-page order authored by Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Nazim Hussain Siddiqui. A three-member bench, comprising the chief justice, Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar and Justice Mian Shakirullah Jan, on Nov 22, 2004, granted bail to Asif Zardari in the BMW car reference.

Mr Zardari was accused of importing a 1993 model bullet-proof BMW car from the UK in the name of one Sajid Qayyum in 1995 to evade Rs14.2 million duty during the second term of Benazir Bhutto, by showing the car as an ordinary 1600 CC vehicle.

Mr Zardari was arrested the same day when the government of Benazir Bhutto was dismissed by then President Sardar Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari on Nov 5, 1996. It was established from record, the order said, that original importer of the famous BMW car was Sajid Qayyum, who had transferred the car to Badaruddin and later transferred it to one Saeed Khan.

It was also evident from record that it was Sajid Qayyum who had imported the car and paid the customs duty according to law. There was irrefutable evidence to the effect that Zardari, at the relevant time, was not in power besides nothing concrete had been brought on record to show that Zardari had any link with Sajid Qayyum or for that matter with Badaruddin and Saeed Khan, the order said.

Also there was no evidence worth relying that the vehicle had actually been sent from Zardari House to the garage of Aitizaz Niazi in Islamabad, it said. Interestingly neither Sajid Qayyum nor Badruddin nor Saeed Khan or any custom officer or any registration officer had been accused in the case. The main witness of the prosecution, Anis Ahmed, during the trial was declared hostile as he had not supported the prosecution, the order said.

Raja Muhammad Ibrahim Satti, representing the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), had also failed to give any satisfactory reply, the order said, when the bench had asked him that it appeared that the case against Zardari was malafide and he (Zardari) was involved in the reference only after he had been granted bail in other cases.

However, Ibrahim Satti had stated that there was no question of false involvement of Zardari and the case against him was registered strictly in accordance with law.