Lahore court acquits Rana Sanaullah in Drugs case

By Muhammad JuniadPublished On 06 Jan 2023

LAHORE: A special court in Lahore has acquitted Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and others in a case related to narcotics recovery. The ANF prosecutor Danish Mashkoor Siddiqi resigned from his assignment minutes before the verdict became public.

Minutes before the judgment was announced, MM News learnt that two prosecution witnesses retracted their statement, saying they didn’t see recovery of narcotics from Rana Sanaullah. Farhad Shah Advocate said both of the witnesses were linked to ‘recovery-memo’ (of narcotics), but both retracted their statement.

The decision by the Lahore-based special court came within hours after Rana Sanaullah filed petition, seeking acquittal for himself and others in the case. He contended that the prosecution didn’t have any incriminating piece of evidence against them and emphasized that the story narrated in the first information report (FIR) was ‘concocted and fabricated’.

In this petition filed today for acquittal, Rana Sanaullah alleged that this was a case of political victimisation, citing Fawad Chaudhry’s statement on TV in which he had had categorically admitted that this case was not lodged during deposed premier Imran Khan’s government and that the case was filed by ‘influential people’ within the country.

Case details

On July 1, 2019, Sanaullah was arrested by the ANF Lahore team while he was traveling from Faisalabad to Lahore near the Ravi Toll Plaza on the motorway, and the team claimed to have seized 15kg of heroin from his vehicle.

A special team had also arrested five others, including the driver and security guards of the PML-N leader.

According to the FIR registered by the ANF deputy director operations – under sections 186,189 and 353 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), while sections 15, 17 of 9C of the Control of Narcotic Substances Act (CNSA) 1997 – the ANF had received information that Rana Sanaullah was involved in drug smuggling and now was now taking heroin to Lahore.

It is pertinent to note that Section 9(C) of the CNSA 1997 carries the death penalty or life imprisonment or a jail term that may extend to 14 years, along with a fine of up to Rs1 million.