KARACHI: A special court for the Control of Narcotic Substances (CNS) has sentenced three men to life in prison for attempting to traffic over 1.3 tonnes of charas to an African country.

Special CNS Court Judge Rajesh Chander Rajput found three accused — Adnan, Hamal and Nadir — guilty of possessing over 1,370kg of charas in their fishing boat for attempting to traffic contraband to Somalia, Africa.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs1 million each on the convicts; in default, they would serve additional imprisonment.

Regarding the co-accused Waheed, the court ruled the case file shall remain dormant until his arrest, or he surrenders before the court.

According to state prosecutor Abdul Hanan, the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) had received a tip-off that “some unidentified smugglers” would transport a huge quantity of narcotics in a speedboat into the open sea through their agent, Waheed, and then transfer the drugs to a fishing boat for trafficking to Somalia.

Acting on the intel, an ANF team, along with Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) officials, went into the deep sea on Nov 17, 2020. They searched the area and found the Al-Bilal fishing boat about 45 nautical miles off Hawksbay Road.

The boat was intercepted, and three accused were arrested. The ANF also allegedly recovered contraband weighing a total of 1,371.740kg.

On the other hand, defence counsel claimed innocence and denied the allegations.

The counsel for the accused had contended before the court that they had no “conscious knowledge of the contraband” and they were falsely implicated in the case.

However, the court rejected the defence pleas, and noted that the record revealed that only the three accused were present on the boat and were navigating it in the deep sea.

“In the ordinary course of human conduct, it is highly improbable that persons exercising exclusive control over a boat would remain unaware of the presence of such a huge quantity of narcotic substance concealed therein. The surrounding circumstances, therefore, irresistibly lead to the inference that the accused were in conscious possession of the recovered contraband,” the court observed.

ANF-Clifton registered a case under Sections 6/9-C, 14 and 15 of the CNS Act, 1997.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2026