Man acquitted of drug trafficking charge

Rejects evidence of investigating officers as several discrepancies were found

A Delhi court has acquitted a man of the charge of carrying 8 kg poppy powder as the public witnesses refused to support the prosecution version on the seizure and sampling of the drug at the gate of Gurdwara Rakabganj in New Delhi last year.

The court also rejected the evidence of the investigating officers of the case as it found several discrepancies in it.

“In view of the discrepancies that have come to the fore during cross-examination of the police officials, it is to be held that the version put forward by the investigating agency that the search and seizure proceedings had taken place cannot be believed at all,” the court said rejecting their evidence.

“It is the complainant, Balbir Singh, who appears to have correctly deposed that no such proceedings had taken place at the spot and that the police officials had merely taken the accused from the Gurdwara to the police station,” the court further said.

“In view of such a finding, the accused in the present case cannot be convicted and will have to be given the benefit of doubt,” Additional Sessions Judge Anu Grover Bliga said while acquitting accused Baldev Singh in the case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

“In view of the discussion this court is of the considered opinion that the prosecution has failed to prove the samples drawn at the Gurdwara and the spot of seizure of the contraband,” the Judge further said.

The police had arrested the accused on a tip-off. The accused was a Nihang and stayed at the Gurdwara. In his defence, he said that he had been implicated in the case at the instance of another Nihang who also stayed there following a fight with him a few days before the incident.

The public prosecutor in the case urged the court to reject the evidence of the Gurdwara officials in the case. But the court rejected the plea. The officials had turned hostile.