Lahore: A Pakistani court on Saturday acquitted the country's Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah in a narcotics case filed against him during the previous administration led by ousted premier Imran Khan. The minister from the ruling PML-N, who is very close to party supremo and former premier Nawaz Sharif, was arrested in July 2019 by the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) Lahore team near Ravi Toll Plaza on the motorway. He was travelling from Faisalabad to Lahore.
The ANF claimed to have recovered 15 kg of heroin from his vehicle, while it arrested five others, including Sanaullah's driver and security guards. He was twice denied bail by the trial court but the Lahore High Court released him on December 24, 2019. During the hearing on Saturday, two ANF officers retracted their previous statements and dismissed the charges against Sanaullah.
"Two officers of ANF - Assistant Director Imtiaz Ahmed and Inspector Ehsaan Azam - told a special court of Lahore that suspect Rana Sanaullah is innocent as no drug whatsoever was recovered from his vehicle during an ANF raid in July 2019," a court official said. In their affidavit submitted to the court, both officers said they were present when Sanaullah's vehicle was intercepted and he was arrested on the pretext that 15-kg heroin was recovered from it.
Both officers earlier claimed in the FIR that the heroin was recovered from Sanaullah's vehicle. However, they did not tell the court under whose 'pressure' they implicated Sanaullah. Subsequently, the court acquitted the interior minister and all the other people named in the case, it said. Earlier on Saturday, Sanaullah, 67, and five other co-accused filed a plea seeking acquittal in the alleged drug smuggling case registered with the ANF and argued that the prosecution could provide no evidence to establish the case against them.
The interior minister and other petitioners also claimed that this was a case of political victimisation. Speaking to media outside the court, Sanaullah asserted that it was the right of his party to get all false cases quashed. Even the cases against our leadership lodged abroad are being dismissed, he was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper. The minister called out PTI chief Khan, claiming he wanted political instability in the country for his own mileage.
Sanaullah has earlier said that ousted prime minister Khan was behind this case as he wanted to teach him a lesson. Khan was ousted from power in April after losing a no-confidence vote in his leadership, which he alleged was part of a U.S.-led conspiracy targeting him because of his independent foreign policy decisions on Russia, China and Afghanistan. (PTI)
(This story has not been edited by ETV Bharat and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
