LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on an appeal of PML-N leader Raja Hanif Abbasi against his sentence in the ephedrine quota case after conclusion of the arguments.

A special court for control of narcotics substance (CNS) had awarded life imprisonment along with a fine of rupees one million to Abbasi days before the last general elections on July 21, 2018 in the ephedrine quota case.

The Anti Narcotics Force (ANF) had registered the case against Abbasi and others in 2012 under sections 9-C, 14 and 15 of the Control of Narcotics Substances (CNS) Act for misuse of 500kg of ephedrine.

The trial judge had announced the conviction around midnight to meet a dead line set by a single judge of the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench.

The appeal filed by Abbasi said the conviction was politically motivated as only appellant was convicted one out of eight suspects of the case. It said the trial court ignored basic legal questions before handing down the impinged sentence. It argued that the ephedrine did not fall within the definition of scheduled drug or controlled narcotics. However, it said the trial court relied upon a definition of ephedrine explored on Google.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023