The Rohini Court recently acquitted two men, the owner and manager of a cold storage, who were booked for allegedly stocking beef 11 years ago. They were booked after a raid by municipal officials and the police after which samples of the meat were collected and tested in a lab.
Darshan Jai Singhani and Narender Jai Singhani — who, the police claimed were respectively the owner and manager of M/S Darshan Cold Storage Pvt. Ltd. — were booked under the relevant provisions of Delhi Agriculture and Cattle Prevention Act of Keshav Puram police station in north-west Delhi on January 4, 2006.
Samples test positive
This was almost nine months after a “raid” was conducted at the premises by four Municipal Corporation of Delhi officials and a policeman after receiving information that the accused were found in possession of flesh of cow or its progeny and were storing it in the cold storage. The MCD employees — Dr. Sunil Ranga, Dr. Hemant Kaushik, Dr. Narender Dabas and Dr. Virender Verma — collected the samples and sent it to Shri Ram Institute for Industrial Research.
They collected two samples of 500 grams each and the test came back positive. Still, the case for the prosecution fell apart when the defence counsel Pradeep Rana argued and later convinced the court as the order shows that some of the members of the raiding party had turned hostile when cross examined on their initial claims about the entire process.
The court observed that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged raids were conducted at the place where it was said to be in the FIR. It said doubts also remained on whether the alleged samples were lifted from there and whether those were duly sent to the laboratory for examination and were the same samples which were found to contain the meat of cow.
‘No power for MCD’
But the prosecition’s witness, Dr. Ranga, deposed that he had gone to Sushil Ice Cold storage and did not remember the name due to lapse of time and also did not remember that the samples were lifted in the presence of the accused. He even said the (then unified) MCD had no power to lift the sample in the first place.
The court, in its order, observed that Dr. Ranga and Dr. Kaushik had not specifically mentioned about the other two MCD employees being with them during the raid “which creates doubt on the very composition” of the raiding party.
The court order also says that the receipt of samples at the Shri Ram Institute for Industrial Research could not be established. The scientist who prepared the examination report of the sample said he did not remember the date when he received those samples and does not know who sent it for examination or who received it after examination.
“It thus follows from the aforesaid discussions that chances of tampering of the samples cannot be ruled out and that the alleged report is also not free of doubts,” said the court.