Five years after arrest under NDPS Act, Amritsar man acquitted for want of evidence

The main plea that the defence counsel Amandeep Sharma took was that police had violated a provision under Section 50 of the NDPS Act, which says that an accused could be searched only after he/she had been informed and explained about his rights before the nearest magistrate

Amritsar Five years after police arrested a resident of Green Avenue Kot Chowk with 200gm of an intoxicating powder in June 2014, a special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act court acquitted him on the grounds of weak evidence. The case against Pawan Kumar, son of Raj Kumar, had been lodged at the Cantonment Police Station.

HT Image

The main plea that the defence counsel Amandeep Sharma took was that police had violated a provision under Section 50 of the NDPS Act, which says that an accused could be searched only after he/she had been informed and explained about his rights before the nearest magistrate.

“In the case of Kumar, the investigating officer failed to comply with this provision and deserves the benefit of doubt,” the counsel said. It was also pointed out that the memos that the police had prepared on the spot of the arrest bore First-Information Report (FIR) numbers, but no FIR had been lodged on the date of the arrest. It was also found material that the police sent the sample parcel of the recovery made to Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) after a delay of almost three months, whereas this has to be done within 72 hours.

The court of justice Sandeep Singh Bajwa said there had been gross violations of mandatory provisions of Section 50 of the NDPS Act. Further, non-joining of independent witness proves that the version of prosecution is full of infirmities. “The prosecution has failed to prove its case beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt, which entitles the accused to acquittal by giving him the benefit of doubt,” the court ordered.