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The State of Uttar Pradesh v. Hansraj @ Hansu

Criminal Appeal · 2018 INSC 807Decided 12 Sept 2018
Criminal Appeal No. 997 of 2009
Justice R. Banumathi · Justice Indira Banerjee

Background

Police patrolling in the early hours allegedly caught the respondent transporting country-made liquor and found him carrying 300 grams of charas. A trial court convicted him under the NDPS Act and the Excise Act, sentencing him to 10 years' imprisonment, but the Allahabad High Court set aside the conviction and acquitted him, mainly because of an unexplained one-month delay in sending the seized samples to the laboratory and no evidence of how the samples were safely preserved and handled in the meantime. The State appealed to the Supreme Court against this acquittal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court noted that the prosecution had failed to explain how and under what conditions the seized contraband and samples were stored at the police station and transported to the chemical examiner, and that the constables who actually carried the samples were never examined as witnesses: a gap the State could not excuse merely because the investigating officer had since died, since other available witnesses could have filled it. Finding the High Court's view that the prosecution's case was not established to be neither unreasonable nor perverse, the Supreme Court declined to interfere with the acquittal and dismissed the State's appeal.

Lesson Learnt

In narcotics and excise prosecutions, an unexplained break in the chain of custody of seized contraband, such as unaccounted delay in sending samples for testing or failure to prove how evidence was safely preserved and transported, can be fatal to the prosecution's case, and courts will not readily overturn an acquittal based on such a gap.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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