3 heroin smugglers to spend 10 years in jail

LUDHIANA: A local court has sentenced three drug peddlers to 10-year rigorous imprisonment each for smuggling heroin.
Special court judge Jagdeep Singh Marok also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on the three convicts — Baljit Singh (24), Sukhwinder Singh (22) (both of Latiwal village in Sultanpur Lodhi) and Balbir Singh (50) of Toti in Sultanpur Lodhi of Kapurthala district. They will have to further undergo rigorous imprisonment for a year in case they fail to pay the fine.
On November 29, 2017, Doraha police had arrested the trio with 1.1kg heroin. They were travelling in an SUV when they were stopped at a checkpost by a police party on patrolling duty on Khanna-Ludhiana road in Doraha.
During trial of the case, the accused had pleaded false implication.
Additional public prosecutor for the state had pleaded for punishment to the accused on the basis of prosecution evidence.
The defence counsel pleaded that there was omission on the part of investigating officer to join some independent witness from the surrounding areas and failure to do so on the part of prosecution itself is an infirmity and under these circumstances, story of prosecution cannot be relied upon in the absence of any cogent and convincing evidence.
The court turned down the plea, saying, “It is no doubt true that testimony of official witnesses is as good as that of private individual and reliance can straightway be placed on the statements of said police officials who while discharging their official duties are always assumed to act conscientiously. In the present case, it is a chance recovery during patrolling by the police and under these circumstances, if the independent witness by investigating officer has not been joined, then it cannot weaken the strength of case of prosecution,” the court remarked.
The court observed that there appears to be no reason for the police to falsely implicate the accused from whom huge quantity of contraband was recovered. “It is highly improbable that such huge quantity of heroin would be arranged by the police officials in order to falsely implicate the accused,” the court remarked.