ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court overturned its 26-year-old judgment convicting former federal minister Anwar Saifullah Khan in a corruption case, observing that material evidence and available defences were insufficiently examined.
A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar and comprising Justice Salahuddin Panhwar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, set aside the SC majority judgment, restored the Lahore High Court (LHC) verdict, and acquitted Anwar Saifullah Khan of the charge in this case.
Anwar Saifullah was convicted under Section 9(a)(vi) read with Section 14(d) of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999 by Accountability Court (AC) that he as Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources in 1996 facilitated and approved appointments in OGDCL by relaxing the applicable rules. The AC sentenced him to one year of imprisonment, a fine of Rs 5,000,000/- (with the benefit of Section 382-B, CrPC.) and disqualification.
The LHC, through a judgment dated 13.06.2002, acquitted him by reappraising the entire record, including the testimony of seven prosecution witnesses, the documentary evidence, and the statement of the petitioner under Section 340(2), Cr.P.C.
The State challenged the LHC before the Supreme Court, which, by majority on 20.01.2016, restored the conviction with modification of remitting the fine. The petitioner then filed a review petition against the SC judgment.
The judgment, authored by Justice Salahuddin Panhwar, noted that the acts alleged against the petitioner pertain to the year 1996. At that time, the governing legal regime was not the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, which did not then exist; it came into being only three years later. Yet the conviction has ultimately been sustained under Section 9(a)(vi) read with Section 14(d) of the NAO, 1999. “This places the conviction in direct conflict with Article 12(1)(b) of the Constitution,” it added.
The judgment said it is a well-settled principle that the power of this Court to review a judgment in a criminal case is limited, though, as already observed, not toothless. An error, to warrant review, must be apparent on the face of the record; but such an error, by itself, does not in every case justify interference. To attract correction in review, the error must not only be manifest, but it must also have a material bearing upon the outcome of the case.
The present matter discloses not one but a confluence of such errors. A constitutional bar under Article 12 was left wholly unaddressed, with the consequence that the conviction has been sustained under a statute that the Constitution forbids to be applied retrospectively. The rule of strict construction of penal statutes was passed over. Material evidence and available defences were insufficiently examined, and substantial parts of the defence record were not brought into the reasoning.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026