Shoddy investigation fails drugs cases

Hyderabad: Hyderabad City Police who often boast of cracking down on drug suppliers and peddlers however fail to prove their guilt in the court and hence several such cases end in acquittal.

These include the cases investigated by the Anti Narcotics Cell (ANC), a
specialised wing of the Hyderabad city police. In the cases that ended in
acquittal, courts have pointed out that the investigators have violated
guidelines that are mandated by the NDPS Act and several other lapses,
terming them “fatal to the case”.

In one of the cases reported in 2014, Task Force sleuths nabbed an Uttar
Pradesh-based guest worker and three others from the city in Secunderabad,
seized drugs from them and handed over the case to ANC for further
investigation. But the Forensic Science Laboratory during the examination
found the samples collected from the accused were found to be of a different
drug and did not match the drug as claimed by the police.

In another case, drugs were seized on September 22, 2016, but the samples
were sent for forensic analysis on October 5, 2016, ie., after a delay of
around two weeks. “There is no evidence of where the seized contraband was
kept during the period and the reason for the delay is not explained by the
investigating officer. Thus, the lapses in investigation cast doubt on the
case,” observed the court.

In another case reported in June 2016, cops acted on a tip-off that two
persons were transporting drugs in a car and seized drugs from them. But
during the examination in the court, cops admitted that the accused were
outside the car. Terming this contradiction as a major lapse, in addition to
other lapses, the court acquitted the accused.