Supreme Court criticises Telangana High Court for perverse, mechanical order confirming conviction in drugs case

The Supreme Court on Friday criticised the Telangana High Court for mechanically confirming a trial court order convicting two persons accused in a drugs case [Mohammed Khalid and anr vs State of Telangana]..A bench of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta minced no words in stating that the conviction was illegal and came without an iota of evidence."The prosecution has miserably failed to prove the charges against the accused. The evidence of the police witnesses is full of contradictions and is thoroughly unconvincing. The conviction of the accused appellants as recorded by the trial Court and affirmed by the High Court is illegal on the face of record and suffers from highest degree of perversity," the Supreme Court said while acquitting the accused. .The top court was dealing with appeals by the accused (appellants) challenging their conviction under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.The appellants had been accused of transporting 80 kilograms of ganja in a car in 2009. The trial court convicted them in 2010, which was affirmed by the High Court in November 2022.The apex court, however, found that the High Court had erred in confirming the conviction.After going through the case records, the top court lamented that confessions to police officers and interrogation notes had been relied upon as evidence."It is trite that confession of an accused recorded by a Police Officer is not admissible in evidence as the same is hit by Section 25 of the Evidence Act. Neither the trial Court nor the High Court adverted to this fatal flaw in the prosecution case and proceeded to convict A-3 and A-4 in a sheerly mechanical manner without there being on iota of evidence on record of the case so as to hold them guilty," the Supreme Court said. .Further, the Court found that the inventory of drugs seized was not maintained properly, nor was the recording of forensic data properly done. "Seizure Officer(Inspector PW-1) made no effort whatsoever to conduct a separate weighment of the contraband by segregating the chillies. Rather, the panchnama is totally silent about presence of chillies with the bundles of ganja. Thus, it cannot be said with any degree of certainty that the recovered ganja actually weighed 80 kgs," the top court said. .The appeals were, thus, eventually allowed. The verdicts of the High and trial courts were quashed.The accused were acquitted of all charges and directed to be released immediately. .Senior Advocate C Nageswara Rao with advocates Vikram Hegde, Chitwan Sharma, Chinmayi Shrivastava, Shreeyash Uday Lalit, Tushar Singh, and Praseena Elizabeth Joseph appeared for the accused.Advocates Kumar Vaibhaw, Devina Sehgal, and Mohd Ashaab appeared for the State of Telangana..[Read Judgment]