Ali Musa Gilani, the son of former premier Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, moved the apex court to seek interim relief against the Lahore High Court (LHC) order in the matter of ephedrine quota case. Gilani invoked appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court against LHC verdict which denied him pre-arrest bail in the ephedrine case on September 3.
Ali Musa is accused of pressing Health Ministry officials in 2010 to allocate quota of a controlled chemical, ephedrine, to two different pharmaceutical companies. Recently, the Supreme Court granted pre-arrest bail in the same matter to Makhdoom Shahabuddin till September 25.
Filing the pre-arrest bail under Article 185(3) of the Constitution, Khalid Ranjha, the counsel for Ali Musa Gilani, submitted that his client's name did not appear in the FIR or in any of the challan submitted by the prosecution before the court. "There is no evidence of incriminating nature against my client, warrants have been obtained out of sheer malice, ill will and by keeping the court deliberately in the dark," he argued.
Ranjha said that the FIR was being used as a ruse to arrest his client and thereby to defame him in the eyes of his electorate and tarnish his family's public image. Contending that although there was no evidence to connect the petitioner with the impugned FIR, he said that investigators were out to arrest the petitioner and that the petitioner's arrest warrants were obtained on June 21 this year.
Ranjha pleaded that his client had obtained protective bail from the Sindh High Court on July2 till July 16 and alleged that investigating agencies had lured two principal accused - Rizwan Ahmed Khan and Dr Rasheed Juma -to frustrate the petitioner's bail before the LHC. Both accused were listed as principal accused in reports filed under Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code to become approvers in a bid to rope in the petitioner.
Requesting the court for interim relief, Ranjaha said that there was no evidence against his client in connection with the ephedrine quota allocation, adding that his arrest was being sought for political reasons. "Under the circumstances, it is prayed that special leave to appeal may very graciously be granted against the order of the LHC of September 3," Ranjaha submitted.