Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 2: Principal Sessions Judge Kathua, M K Hanjura has acquitted Kuldeep Singh, son of Ram Krishan of Down Kalan, Punjab, who was facing trial in smuggling of poppy straw.
The accused was arrested by police on May 5, 2007 when he was driving a tanker towards Punjab and from his possession five packets containing poppy straw were recovered. On the completion of the investigation, a charge sheet for the commission of the offences under Section 8/15 NDPS Act was preferred against the accused in the court.
After hearing Advocate Balbir Singh for the accused whereas Public Prosecutor Ravi Kumar Gupta for the State, Principal Sessions Judge observed, “the crime cases under the NDPS Act registered in our State suffer from an intrinsic infirmity. They have to face abject failure for the reason that at the infrastructural level we do not have the tools in the FSL for the analysis of narcotic drugs as could scientifically detect the amount and level of various substances in them”.
“No precision or exactitude is possible in absence of such laboratory apparatus and appliances which would find the percentages or actual weights of the drug component in the substances detected and seized”, the Court said, adding “nowhere has it been stated by any amount of evidence that the samples were deposited in the malkhana till such time that these were resealed and thereafter up to when these were received in the laboratory”.
“The SSP, who is alleged to have dispatched the samples for chemical analysis has neither been cited nor examined as a witness in the case. The police are, abinitio, averse to calling a spade a spade and relish and revel in their age-old habit and tradition of rendering confusion worse confounded. They add to this web their own intricacies”, the court said.
With these observations, Court acquitted the accused.
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