CHENNAI: An NDPS trial court in Chennai, on Monday, acquitted a 29-year-old Malaysian-Indian accused by the Chennai airport customs of smuggling in 100 tablets of the drug ecstasy from Germany through foreign post during the first wave of Covid-19 pandemic.
Strongly criticising the shoddy investigation by customs, the judge said that the agency had tried to “fix the accused on surmises” and failed to establish even fundamental facts in the case.
Customs had booked the case under NDPS Act in June 2020 when they found a parcel received from Germany had the tablets weighing 160g. The parcel did not have sender details and was marked to Erode resident P Kavikumar (then 25 years old).
Over the course of their investigation, customs alleged that he had ordered the drugs from Germany and raked up other cases of ordering ganja from England and getting the parcels delivered to his mother in Erode and brother in Coimbatore.
The Bengaluru house where Kavikumar lived was searched and a few days later he was arrested after interrogation.
However, during trial the judge pointed out that apart from procedural flaws, the prosecution had made several mistakes.
For instance, the accused had been arrested without an iota of evidence and importantly, he had given no inculpatory statement. In fact, the seized contraband had not even been delivered to the accused and customs had failed to conduct a ‘controlled delivery,’ which involved the drug consignment being knowingly allowed to pass through to the receiver by the investigators to identify those involved in the offence.
Customs did not show evidence as to how they found his Bengaluru address, took no initiative to produce his mobile phone or conduct any forensic analysis and also did not mark call details taken from records as per legal procedures.
In fact, the judge said that customs had produced contradictory evidence regarding the country of origin of the parcel. Details of the tracking number or flight number in which the parcel came was not produced.
The judge also picked holes in the prosecution’s theory that Kavikumar made payment for the drugs to his friend in England, but it was never their case that the contraband was imported from that country.
The prosecution’s failure to probe the role of Kavikumar’s friend in England who allegedly sent him the contraband and the other person who was supposed to collect it from him also proved costly, the judge said.
Despite Kavikumar’s mother and brother expressing their ignorance about the delivery of ganja parcels to their address, the prosecution relied on that to prove the case.
“Alleged parcels in their name alone without actual delivery would not prove the complicity of the accused in the offence,” the judge said.