Rizwan Khan v. The State of Chhattisgarh
Background
The appellant was convicted under Section 20(b)(ii)(B) of the NDPS Act for possessing 20 kg of ganja recovered from his motorcycle, and sentenced to five years' rigorous imprisonment. His appeal before the Chhattisgarh High Court was dismissed, so he approached the Supreme Court, arguing that the independent panch witnesses had turned hostile, there were clerical discrepancies in sample numbering and vehicle registration details across documents, and that the officer who recorded the FIR was also the investigator, which he argued should vitiate the trial.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court upheld the conviction. It held that the testimony of police officials does not need independent corroboration to be believed, and that the two hostile panch witnesses did not undermine a prosecution case otherwise proved through reliable, consistently cross-examined police witnesses. The alleged discrepancy in sample labelling was found to be a mere clerical error, since other records consistently traced the recovered contraband through to forensic testing. The Court also noted that, on the facts, the FIR-recording officer and the actual investigating officer were different people, so the "investigator-cum-complainant" objection did not even arise. Compliance with the NDPS Act's procedural safeguards (Sections 42 and 55) was found to be duly established, and the plea for a reduced sentence was rejected since the five-year term was already at the lenient end of the permissible range (up to ten years).
Lesson Learnt
A drug-possession conviction can validly rest on credible police testimony alone, even without independent witnesses, provided the officers are cross-examined and found trustworthy and the statutory safeguards under the NDPS Act are shown to have been followed; minor clerical inconsistencies in paperwork will not by themselves defeat a well-proved prosecution case.