PESHAWAR, Dec 12: A two-member bench of the Supreme Court here has admitted to full hearing an appeal filed by a former additional secretary of housing and physical planning department, challenging the remissions withdrawn from him by the government.

The appellant, Akber Khan Marwat, has stated that he had now been kept in illegal detention as he had already completed his prison terms of four years, but the government had withdrawn remissions earlier granted to him.

The appellant has filed the leave-to-appeal petition against the judgment of the Peshawar High Court, whereby, his habeas corpus petition was dismissed.

The Supreme Court bench comprising Justice Mian Muhammad Ajmal and Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza Khan observed that the points raised by the appellant needed consideration. The bench observed that the appeal would be fixed for final hearing soon after the winter vacations.

The high court bench had ruled in its judgments delivered in May last that a convict who had been extended benefit of section 382-B of the Criminal Procedure Code was not entitled to the remission granted during the period he remained an under-trial prisoner.

Previously, the prisons authorities across the province allowed remission to the prisoners who were extended benefit of section 382-B of the CrPC — a section under which the period of detention of an under-trial prisoner has to be considered while awarding sentence to him.

Marwat was convicted by an accountability court and was sentenced to four years imprisonment and fined Rs3.836 million.

He was given benefit of section 382-B of the CrPC and also given remissions by the prison authorities under Article 45 of the Constitution.

He was to be released from prison on March 1, 2002, but on the directives of the IG Prison the remissions granted to him were withdrawn, stating that the convicts under the National Accountability Bureau ordinance were not entitled to remission.

Advocate Abdul Sattar Khan appeared for the appellant and argued that the remissions once granted and its entry made in the History Ticket of the prisoner could not be withdrawn even by the authority granting it. He pointed out that the jail authorities had entered in the appellant’s History Ticket all the remissions granted under article 45 of the Constitution and therefore the respondents were estopped from withdrawing these remissions.

Khan pointed out that in 1991 the prison authorities had sought legal opinion from the law department whether remission could be extended to a convict for the period during which he was an under-trial prisoner, and the law department had informed that remission should be given to such prisoners.