The Islamabad High Court on Thursday issued a notice to Interior Ministry and ordered it to reply in two weeks in a case related to the Czech model Tereza Hluskova who was acquitted last year in a drug smuggling case and wants to return to her country.

IHC judge Justice Aamer Farooq conducted the hearing of the case in which Hluskova requested the court for her passport and other material so she may return to her country.

Presenting arguments on behalf of the model, Advocate Saif ul Malook told the court that the ministry rejected her client's request to go back to her country.

When asked why the petition was not filed in the Lahore High Court, which had sentenced the model and later acquitted her, Advocate Malook said the case was filed in the IHC because the Interior Ministry is in Islamabad.

The custom officials arrested Hluskova, 25, at the Lahore airport for trafficking nine kilogrammes of heroin in January 2018.

The Czech model was trying to board a flight for the United Arab Emirates when the officials found drugs hidden in her suitcase. Hluskova insisted someone placed the drugs in her suitcase and she had no knowledge of it.

In March 2019, a Lahore trial court sentenced Hluskova to eight years and eight months in prison and also imposed a fine on her. 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, according to a Dawn report.

The same year in April, the model filed an appeal in the LHC against her sentence and pleaded through her counsel that the conviction was handed over to her without concrete evidence against the appellant and that it was beyond the merit of the case, read the report.

On November 1 last year, the court acquitted her as “the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt”, according to her lawyer Saif ul Malook.