KARACHI: A model court has awarded life imprisonment to a woman and 12-year imprisonment to a man to in a case pertaining to possessing drugs.

Farzana and Qaiser Abbas were found guilty of possessing around 25kg of hashish.

Additional Sessions Judge Zeeshan Akhtar Khan of the Model Criminal Trial Court (West) pronounced his verdict earlier reserved after recording evidence and final arguments from both sides.

He noted that `It is not out of place to mention here that the Superior Courts had already observed that in cases pertaining to offence of narcotics, the drug peddlers, to achieve their nefarious objectives, had adopted obnoxious device by engaging womenfolk andthrough them crimes were being committed and ultimately mercy was sought on humanitarian grounds`.

Therefore, he sentenced the female accused to life imprisonment and ordered her to also pay a fine of Rs100,000. On default, she would have to undergo one-year additional imprisonment.

The judge added that `superior courts called for adequate punishment to be awarded instead of showing sympathy on the ground of the accused being a woman to curb such a menace, otherwise the actual accused involved in such heinous crime, which was against society, would be encouraged and carriers would also be freely available to promote the crime hoping that after serving minor sentences, they would be free`.

The judge also sentenced co-accusedAbbas to 12-year and six-months imprisonment and ordered to pay Rs60,000 fine. On default, he would have to undergo nine-month additional imprisonment.

Earlier, the state prosecutor Muhammad Ashraf Qaiser argued that on June 29, 2022, an Assistant Subinspector Ayub Meerani had stopped a suspicious motorcyclist and his pillion rider at Mochko checkpost.

During the search, the police had successfully recovered eight packets of hashish weighing around 10kg were seized from the man while 12 packets of hashish weighing 15kg from the possession of the woman, he added.

He contended that the prosecution had sufficient evidence which connect the accused with the commissioning of the heinous of fence as they were caught in possession of huge quantity of hash-ish. Though all the witnesses are police officials, there is nothing on record to show they have any enmity or ill-motive to implicate the accused in the case, he clarified.

The prosecutor requested the court to punish both accused according to the law.

On the other hand, the defence lawyers argued that their clients were innocent, but had falsely been implicated by the police.

They contended that the alleged recovery was made at the main road, but no private person was associated by the prosecution as witness. They pleade d to acquit their clients of allege d false and fabricated charges.

A case was lodged under Section 6 and 9-C of the Control of Narcotic Substances Act 1997 at the Mochko police station.