PESHAWAR, Jan 14: The Peshawar High Court on Friday set aside life sentence awarded to two alleged drug smugglers and ordered their acquittal.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Syed Sajjad Hassan Shah and Justice Imtiaz Ali allowed a criminal appeal filed by the two convicts, Sajid Khan and Fazal Ghani, observing that the evidence on record did not connect the appellants with the offence.

The suspects were arrested by officials of Pishtakhara police station while they were traveling in a car on Dec 24, 2008.

The police alleged that from secret cavities of the car they had recovered around 14kg raw and refined charas.

They were convicted by the court of an additional district and sessions judge on Sept 14, 2009, and were sentenced to life imprisonment and fined Rs20,000 each.

The appellants' counsel, Noor Alam Khan, pointed out that the concerned police officials had recorded conflicting evidence as some of them said that the contraband was recovered from the front door whereas others said that it was recovered from the rear door.

He further stated that when the case property was opened in the court it only included refined charas and it was not present in raw form, which was contrary to the claim of the police.

The counsel contended that even the report of the Forensic Science Laboratory did not make any differentiation between the raw and refined charas. He added that the police also claimed that two women were seating in the rear seats, but they had not associated those women in the interrogation and nothing was mentioned that who were those women and why they were set free.