ISLAMABAD: Two judges of the Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi Bench recused themselves from hearing PML-N leader Mohammad Hanif Abbasi’s appeal against his conviction in the ephedrine case.

The LHC Registrar Office has fixed his petition for hearing by a division bench for next week, starting from Sept 24.

On Sept 18, an LHC division bench consisting of Justice Shahid Mehmood Abbasi and Justice Tariq Abbasi took up the said appeal. Justice Shahid Abbasi recused himself from the case as he was the prosecutor general of the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) when Hanif Abbasi was booked for the misuse of ephedrine.

One of the judges was an ANF prosecutor general, the other was a counsel against Abbasi in SC

ANF had registered a case against Hanif Abbasi and his accomplices in June 2012 under sections 9-C, 14 and 15 of the Control of Narcotics Substances (CNS) Act for misuse of 500kg of ephedrine.

The CNS Court of Rawalpindi sentenced Hanif Abbasi to lifetime in prison in the case just before the July 25 general elections. The same court had in June adjourned proceedings of the case till after the elections.

The PML-N leader filed an appeal against his conviction before the LHC Rawalpindi bench which was taken up on Aug 16.

However, a judge of the division bench, Justice Mirza Waqas Rauf recused himself from hearing the appeal, saying he had appeared as a counsel against Abbasi before the Supreme Court. Justice Rauf was a counsel for Sheikh Rashid.

The case against Hanif Abbasi has been pending since 2012. However, while hearing a petition of habitual litigant Shahid Orakzai, LHC Justice Ibadur Rehman Lodhi directed the CNS court to conduct day-to-day proceedings in the said case and decide it on July 21.

The sudden conviction left NA-60 open to Sheikh Rashid as Hanif Abbasi was the PML-N’s candidate in the constituency. However, the Election Commission of Pakistan postponed the elections in the constituency,

Another case related to the misuse of 9,000kg of ephedrine has been pending in the CNS court of Islamabad since 2011.

Former health minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin and Ali Musa Gilani, the son of former premier Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, are among the accused in the case.

Earlier this month, the accused in the second case challenged the jurisdiction of the CNS court for trying the case. Their lawyer, Abdul Rashid Sheikh, argued that the relevant forum for entertaining such a complaint will be a drug court.

He maintained that ephedrine is not a narcotic, that a chemical examination did not find any narcotics in the ephedrine and that the ANF had wrongly invoked the CNS Act against the accused.

Mr Sheikh has filed a petition before the Islamabad High Court (IHC), seeking the court’s verdict against the invoking of the CNS Act in the ephedrine case.

The petition was heard by IHC division bench consisting of Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani. The bench has issued a notice to the ANF and sought comments on the petition.

According to ANF special prosecutor Chaudhry Ihtisham, the counsel had earlier filed a petition seeking the quashing of the FIR against the accused on similar grounds which the court rejected.

In October last year, the CNS court dismissed applications from the accused for their acquittal. The court indicted nine including Musa Gillani and Makhdoom Shahab in the case in April last year.

The defense counsel challenged the CNS court’s jurisdiction and said the prosecution evidence was insufficient for establishing a case against the accused persons.

The case surfaced in March 2011 when then federal minister Makhdoom Shahbuddin told the National Assembly that government will investigate the alleged allocation of 9,000kg of ephedrine to two pharmaceutical companies, Berlex and Danas. According to the rules, a company cannot be allocated more than 500kg of the drug.

ANF registered a case against after Danas and Berlex were accused of obtaining export quota for the drug in collusion with health ministry officials, which exceeded the limits fixed by the International Narcotics Control Board.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2018