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KARACHI: A sessions court acquitted 15 men in a money laundering case on Wednesday.
The court passed such order due to non-production of witnesses by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in the case pertaining to illegally sending billions of rupees abroad through hawala and hundi.
The accused — Rohinton Patel, Mustansir Bandukwala, Quaid Johar Mandviwala, Arshad Ghaffar Rajwani, Syed Javed Jafffery, Imran Khan, Athar Nadeem Rao, Muhammad Raees, Salam Chatoor, Haider Ali Tejani, Syed Hadi Ali Rizvi, Jameel Hussain, Saleem Abdul Hussain, Asif Riaz and Faheem Shekhani — were charged with laundering billions of rupees through fake bank accounts.
Additional District and Sessions Judge (South) Ashraf Hussain Khowaja pronounced his verdict reserved on three applications filed by the accused seeking acquittal under under Section 265-K of the criminal procedure code.
According to the prosecution, FIA Inspector Muhammad Ali Abro conducted an inquiry into maintaining of fake bank accounts through forged and fake signatures.
It said that accused Saqib Raja, secretary of M/s Mars Exchange, was arrested and during interrogation he disclosed that the accounts were opened and maintained to route transactions related to illegal business of hawala/hundi.
The FIA had booked the suspects, who were later charged with committing offences punishable under relevant provisions of the Foreign Exchange Regulations Act, 1947 and Pakistan Penal Code.
Defence counsel Ameen M Badudkda, Ashraf Yar Khan and Hassan Sabir contended that the FIR was lodged against main accused Sadiq Raja who had already been acquitted in the present case.
They said the applicants were dragged in the matter since 2015.
They said either the prosecution witnesses were not attending the court to record their testimonies or the prosecution was not proceeding with the case.
The counsel argued that the applicants were not likely to be convicted, therefore they might be acquitted.
On the other hand, FIA prosecutor Muhammad Faisal opposed the acquittal pleas, arguing that the applicants had made transactions as per emails secured from main accused Raja. Therefore, the burden lied upon the applicants/accused to disprove the allegations.
The prosecutor also argued that the acquittal applications filed by the accused persons were not maintainable and liable to be dismissed.
The judge noted that from the perusal of the record, it appeared that the main accused of the offence, Saqib Raja, was running the M/s Mars Exchange at Agha Super Market and initially the FIR was lodged against him, in which he had admittedly been acquitted.
Subsequently, the present case was registered against the applicants/accused on the ground that as per email record of the main suspect, present applicants had made transactions through him, the judge stating, adding that case pertained to the year 2015 and charge was framed on March 28, 2019 after which another accused, Faheem Shekhani, joined the trial, hence the charge was amended on Aug 29, 2019.
The judge noted that the record further showed that Inspector Nabeel Mehboob was partly examined on Feb 24, 2021, adding that since then, either the witnesses were not appearing or prosecution was called absent.
He observed that the applicants were also not likely to be convicted. “Accordingly, the instant applications are allowed and the present applicants/accused are hereby acquitted under Section 265-K of the Criminal Procedure Code.”
Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2022
