Court slams Shahinayathgunj police for procedural flaws in NDPS case investigation
Nampally: A local court has acquitted four persons accused of possessing and selling ganja by Shahinayathgunj police of Hyderabad commissionerate, citing several procedural and legal lapses.
The accused, Arjun Singh, Balaji Rao, Thakur Gopal Singh, and Churaman Mukesh Singh, were arrested in 2020 and after four years court trial they were acquitted.
The court’s judgment highlighted several critical failures in the prosecution’s case, raising questions about the conduct of NDPS case investigations and the importance of adhering to legal procedures.
The court observed, “On careful perusal of the evidence, it discloses that there are several procedural and legal lapses by the Investigating agency. It’s clear that the Gazetted Officer belongs to the same Police department. The investigating officer didn’t try to secure a Gazetted Officer from another department, despite the daytime incident and the offence occurred in the heart of Hyderabad city, where securing another Gazetted Officer would be easy”.
Despite the incident occurring in a busy area of Hyderabad during daytime, the investigating officers failed to secure local inhabitants as witnesses. The court found that the main witness, a Village Revenue Officer (VRO), was not a local resident of the area where the alleged crime occurred. This witness had previously mediated in several other police cases. Therefore, the Court noted, “The witness is an interested and stock witness for Police and his testimony does not inspire confidence”.
13-month delay in evidence certification leads to acquittal
Furthermore, it is evident that the alleged seized property was neither produced before the concerned Magistrate nor before this Court soon after its seizure as mandated under Sec. 52-A of NDPS Act.
On March 17, 2020, Shahinayathgunj police seized the contraband, and it is mandatory for the Investigating Officer to file an application before the Magistrate soon after the seizure of contraband to certify the inventory’s correctness. However, the record shows that on April 19, 2021, the Investigating Officer filed a requisition before the Court after thirteen months of contraband seizure to certify the inventory and draw representative samples before the Magistrate.
“The police did not comply with the mandatory provisions of Section 52-A of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, which requires prompt certification of seized substances by a magistrate. In this case, the certification was done 13 months after the initial seizure, raising serious questions about the integrity of the evidence.The course adopted by Investigating Officers is totally different and strange. The evidence shows the alleged seized property was tampered with,” the court highlighted. Subsequently, all the accused are found not guilty of the offenses and are accordingly acquitted.
