Last week, the Karnataka High Court took decisive action against police officers responsible for the submission of a false charge sheet against two students, ordering disciplinary proceedings against them. The case dragged on for five years and lead to personal and professional damage to the students involved. On September 10, a bench led by Justice M Nagaprasanna quashed the false charges and called out the grave lapses in police procedure that led to the wrongful accusations.
The case started when a probationary police officer lodged a complaint accusing two students of consuming ganja (marijuana) in Bengaluru, under the jurisdiction of Varthur Police Station. Despite forensic tests conducted by the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) shows no traces of ganja in the students blood samples, the police proceeded with filing a charge sheet against them.
The students eventually approached the High Court to their names. Their legal counsel argued that the charge sheet directly contradicted the FSL findings, asserting that the police had wrongly framed them. The students lost several career opportunities and could not travel abroad due to travel restrictions imposed during the probe.
The government’s legal representatives acknowledged the irregularities, particularly noting that although the panchnama- a formal record of the seized substance claimed 15 grams of ganja had been confiscated, the substance was never sent for forensic analysis.
This oversight violated the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, under which the students were charged. The students lawyers contended that the panchnama had been deliberately falsified, and proper procedures under Section 50 of the NDPS Act, which requires searches to be conducted in the presence of a magistrate were not followed. In this case, no such officer was present during the seizure, making the process illegal. Justice Nagaprasanna’s bench criticized severely the handling of the case by the police, saying that the absence of proper forensic analysis and the lack of adherence to legal protocols rendered the case against the students deeply suspect.
The court remarked, ‘The uncontested facts reveal that the alleged ganja was neither sent for forensic examination nor seized in the presence of a Gazetted Officer or Magistrate, as required by the law.
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