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A Pakistani court on Saturday acquitted the country’s interior minister, Rana Sanaullah, in a drug case brought under the previous government of ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The minister from the ruling PML-N, who is very close to the party’s top leader and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was arrested by the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) Lahore team near the Ravi Toll Plaza on the highway in July 2019. He was traveling from Faisalabad to Lahore.
The ANF claimed to have seized 15kg of heroin from his car, while arresting five others, including Sanaullah’s driver and security guard. He was twice refused bail by the trial court, but the Lahore High Court released him on 24 December 2019.
During Saturday’s hearing, two ANF officials retracted their earlier statements and dismissed the charges against Sanaullah.
“Two ANF officials – Assistant Commissioner Imtiaz Ahmed and Inspector Ehsaan Azam – told a special court in Lahore that the suspect, Rana Sanaullah, was innocent because no one was killed from him during an ANF raid in July 2019. any drugs were found in the vehicle,” a court official said.
In affidavits submitted to the court, both officers said they were present when Sanaullah’s vehicle was stopped and arrested him on the pretext that 15kg of heroin was seized from the vehicle.
Two officers had earlier claimed in the FIR that the heroin was recovered from a vehicle in Sanaullah. However, they did not tell the court under whose “pressure” they implicated Sanaullah.
Subsequently, the court acquitted the interior minister and all others named in the case, it said.
Earlier Saturday, Sanaullah, 67, and five other co-defendants filed a plea to be acquitted in the ANF-registered drug smuggling case, arguing that the prosecution could not produce evidence against them.
The interior minister and other petitioners also claimed it was a case of political persecution.
Speaking to media outside court, Sanaullah said his party had the power to drop all bogus cases.
“Even cases brought against our leadership abroad have been dismissed,” Dawn quoted him as saying.
The minister summoned PTI chief Khan, saying he wanted political instability in the country for his own mileage.
Sanaullah had earlier said that ousted Prime Minister Khan was behind the case because he wanted to teach him a lesson.
Khan was ousted in April after losing a no-confidence vote in his leadership, which he claimed was part of a US-led plot against him because of his independence of foreign policy decisions on Russia, China and Afghanistan .
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