Observing that there are glaring mistakes with the investigation that go to the root of the case and create doubt about its genuineness, a special court has acquitted a 43-year-old Bandra resident in a drugs case after he spent around five years in prison since his arrest in Dec 2017.
The man Salim Shaikh, a Bandra resident, was arrested after the police allegedly found him in possession of 110 g of Mephedrone.
The police claimed they had received secret information that a person by his dressing would be coming near a garage near KC Marg Bandra to sell drugs to his customers. Upon his search, they allegedly found the drugs in a polythene bag in his trouser.
Shaikh’s advocate had argued in his defence that the samples collected from the search and samples sent for forensic analysis were different or had been tampered with.
The lawyer had pointed out that while the seal on the sample collected during the search mentioned the police station’s name in English, the one sent to the forensic lab had the seal with writing in Devanagari script.
The court considered this and other aspects that emerged during the cross-examination of police witnesses and said that there is “serious doubt” created about the story of the prosecution regarding the sealing, stapling and forwarding of the sample to the lab. “Therefore, the entire case of prosecution comes under a cloud of suspicion,” it said.
Special Judge VV Patil under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) said in another part of the judgment of July 16 that as per the forwarding letter, the weight of the sample was 5 g and when a chemical analyst weighed it, as per her evidence, it was 8.5 g.
The judge said that doubt arises if it was the same sample that was collected which was sent for the analysis. The court said that the evidence of the prosecution cannot be considered cogent and reliable and is liable to be discarded while acquitting Shaikh.
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