Lahore, Pakistan: The Czech model Tereza Hluskova was arrested on January 09, 2018, at Lahore Airport by customs authorities. She was shifted to Customs House Lahore after officials refused to hand her over to the ANF. Authorities claimed to recover nine kilograms of heroin from her luggage.
She was traveling to Ireland via Abu Dhabi. This was high profile case because the amount of heroin was more than enough for her life imprisonment.
The case went on fast-paced and on March 20, 2019, she was sentenced on charges of attempting to smuggle heroin from Pakistan to Abu Dhabi to eight years and eight months in jail by the Additional Sessions Judge Shahzad Raza.
She pleaded that she came to Pakistan to work as a model, but someone put eight and a half kilograms of narcotics into her luggage as she was returning home.
The sessions court acquitted a co-suspect, Shoaib, for lack of evidence while three other co-suspects in the case were declared proclaimed offenders during the trial.
On November 1, 2021, the Lahore High Court (LHC) acquitted her.
The appeal against the sentence filed through counsel stated that the trial court handed down the conviction beyond the merits of the case and without any concrete evidence against the appellant. It pleaded that the trial court solely relied upon the concocted story of the prosecution and ignored the facts of the case. The appellant asked the High Court to set aside the conviction and acquit her of the charges.
Hluskova’s lawyer Saiful Malook maintained that it could not be proven that the supposed narcotics were safely transported to the laboratory for testing.
He said that the investigation did not provide details about who transported the samples to the lab, therefore there remained the possibility that they were swapped. The court acquitted Hluskova after listening to the arguments.
Meanwhile, the Czech foreign ministry said that Hluskova’s release should follow “within days after the verdict is processed”.
