Daily Times

The Lahore High Court’s (LHC) Rawalpindi Bench ordered on Wednesday that the narcotics smuggling trial against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Hanif Abbasi would be concluded on July 21.

Abbasi, who is contesting the upcoming election from NA-60, Rawalpindi, is facing charges of misusing 500kg of the controlled chemical ephedrine, which he obtained for his company, Gray Pharmaceutical, in 2010.

The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) had registered a case against Abbasi and his accomplices in June 2012 under various sections of the CNS Act.

ANF officials claim the substance was sold by Abbasi to narcotics smugglers who used it to make “party drugs”.

The trial has been ongoing in a Control of Narcotics Substances (CNS) Court in Rawalpindi.

Abbasi and the other accused, including his brother, were indicted in 2014 by the CNS Court.

At an earlier hearing on April 20, Abbasi had requested the court to unfreeze his accounts.

However, the ANF strongly opposed the request and told the court that if Abbasi would be acquitted in the ephedrine case, all his accounts would be unfrozen automatically, but it was not possible to do so at this stage.

At present, Abbasi has also been accused of impeding officials of the National Accountability Bureau from arresting PML-N leader Capt (r) Safdar after he was sentenced to jail in the Avenfield properties case.

Abbasi, a former MNA from Rawalpindi, is expected to have a tough electoral contest on July 25 with Sheikh Rasheed – who is allied with PML-N’s chief opponent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

Published in Daily Times, July 12^th 2018.