Court, counsel of arrested say cops couldn't produce witness; statements were contradictory
Court, counsel of arrested say cops couldn't produce witness; statements were contradictory
Five innocent people, including a woman, spent eight years behind bars at Tihar Jail for a crime they did not commit.
Who was responsible? The protector of the law the cops who goofed-up their investigations.
Worse, the five didn't even get a day's bail in these eight long years.
Last month, a sessions court in Delhi acquitted the five arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police in 2001 for possessing drugs worth Rs 5 crore.
The plight of the five, all in their thirties, is heightened in the backdrop of the much publicised bail romps of murder convicts Manu Sharma and Vikas Yadav.
The court acquitted them, calling the investigations and the statements of the police contradictory.
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The police told the court that a raiding party was formed which left in five private cars and laid a trap at the highway. At around 3.40 pm, the cops spotted two Africans meeting Bachan Singh, who had already reached the spot. Cops said Singh and the Africans were arrested red-handed. The three arrested were identified as Bachan Singh, Felix Upker and Boniface Kiriongi. Felix is from Nigeria while Boniface is from Kenya.
Reportedly, a search of the three yielded two packets with 500 gm of heroin in each. The car in which they were travelling was also seized.
The police said during interrogations, Singh confessed to have procured the heroin from one Mohammed Safeeq, who was at another spot on the NH8.
The police then arrested Safeeq from a petrol pump near Rajasthan.
Safeeq was reportedly arrested with four packets of heroin weighing 500 gm each. Cops said the drug packets were hidden in a tool box of a truck. Allegedly, the two arrested men led the cops to a woman identified as Surekha, who was picked up from the New Delhi Railway Station and from her the cops had allegedly recovered a bag with two packets of heroin, each weighing 500 gm.
The five arrested people were sent to jail and stayed there for eight years without even a day's bail. The court finally acquitted them of all charges after observing the contradictions in the police statement.
The counsel for one of the accused, Vikas Gupta, said, "Shiv Murti is a popular destination where the police could have easily found a public witness. Furthermore, the informer was not made a witness though he had provided the information to the cops. Because of shoddy police investigation and a frame-up, these five people had to spend eight years in prison."
670
Is the number of inmates in Tihar who have been arrested under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS). Out of them, 100 are from Kenya, Nigeria and other African nations.
The Other Side
"I can not comment before seeing the record," said Joint Commissioner, Delhi Police, PN Aggarwal
At Yerawada Women Central Jail, Pune, nine foreign nationals are serving term. Among them, eight women, between the age group of 30 and 35, are booked under the NDPS Act. There are four nationals each from South Africa, Kenya, Seychelles and Zimbabwe, four from Uganda are also serving their term under the Act.
In Mumbai the total number of people arrested under the NDPS Act was 3240 while five cases were registered under the law on Bangalore airport last month.
Uniform contradictions
Car care: Earlier, the police had informed the court they had taken five different private cars and around 22 officials to arrest Bachan Singh and that an informer had given them the tip-off. However, later, the police failed to explain why they had not used government vehicles to conduct the raid.
The police also failed to produce evidence to show the use of the private cars, thereby arising suspicions the case may have been a fake one. Later, cops told the court they had borrowed the cars from friends.
However, the police failed to provide the court the names and the numbers of the vehicles and their owners.
No one saw us: According to the police, the five were arrested from busy locations of Mahipalpur and the New Delhi Railway Station. However, they failed to produce any public witness who had seen the cops arresting the five. The police told the court they had not found any public witness to the incident.
Evidence tampered: After the police allegedly arrested the five people and recovered the drugs from them, the contraband substance was sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) in Delhi. According to the recovery memo produced by the cops, 20 gm of heroin was sent to the CFSL but the laboratory report shows the weight as 20.10 gm, giving arise to suspicion that the evidence may have been tampered with.
The court also observed that the cloth parcel in which the heroin sample was allegedly sealed by the investigating officer at the spot of arrest had been stitched on three sides. However, the stitch of the third side did not have any seal impression and the drug parcel could have been taken out from this side without tampering with the seal affixed on the other two sides. The police failed to explain as to why the seals were not affixed on the portion where the stitching was done to rule out the possibility of tampering.
Faulty timeline: There were discrepancies in the timings mentioned by the police as to when the samples were deposited at CFSL and the malkhana (depository) of the police station.
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