Sheikh Rashid challenges Hanif Abbasi’s appointment as SAPM in IHC

Sheikh Rashid challenges Hanif Abbasi’s appointment as SAPM in IHC

Web Desk
May 6, 2022

Sheikh Rashid challenges Hanif Abbasi’s appointment as SAPM in IHC

ISLAMABAD: Former interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed on Friday challenged the appointment of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Hanif Abbasi’s appointment as Special Assistant to Prime Minister through a petition in the Islamabad High Court.

The petitioner contended that Abbasi, “a person with a criminal conviction, particularly a conviction for dealing in narcotics which is an offence involving ‘moral turpitude’,” is unsuitable to hold such a position.

In his petition, Rashid argued that the SAPM’s office was one of the few public offices recognised and identified by the provisions of Article 260 of the Constitution. It furthered that while the PML-N leader was convicted and sentenced for the offences registered against him, the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) suspension of the sentence did not forgive his conviction.

“In criminal jurisprudence, there is indeed a marked difference between conviction and sentence. Conviction is finding someone guilty positively of the offence(s) charged with, whereas sentence is the punishment (imprisonment or fine or both) for being guilty of that offence. The Honourable Lahore High Court only suspended the sentence of the Respondent No.2 [Hanif Abbasi] meaning thereby that he still carries the conviction. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, Respondent No.2, being a convict, is disqualified from holding the public office of Special Assistant to the Prime Minister,” the petition read.

The petition lambasted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s judgement stating, “although the Prime Minister’s discretion to appoint Special Assistants is apparently without codified conditions or limitations but in essence, this discretion is neither ‘unfettered’ nor ‘absolute’.”

In 2018, an anti-narcotics court handed down life imprisonment to Hanif Abbasi in the eight-year-old ephedrine case.

According to the judgment that was issued late at night, Abbasi, who was the PML-N candidate from NA-60 against the AML chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, had failed to defend himself, and the charges levelled against him had proven to be true. However, in 2019, the LHC had suspended the PML-N leader’s life sentence in the ephedrine quota case and ordered his release on bail.

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