District and Sessions Court, Panaji sentenced a 28-year-old Nigerian national, James Sunday Chinonso to undergo ten years rigorous imprisonment and to pay a fine of Rs 1 lakh for being in illegal possession of commercial quantity of LSD, a psychotropic substance.
PANAJI
As a part of the evidence, the investigating team from Anti Narcotics Cell of Goa Police submitted before the Court the report of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Hyderabad. The CFSL report stated that out of the two exhibits sent, the first exhibit tested positive for presence of LSD. This exhibit weighed 0.4955 gms of square-shaped papers in an auto-pressed polythene packet.
Section 2 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 classifies any quantity of LSD above 0.1 gm as ‘commercial’ and accordingly, 0.4955 gms was found to have exceeded the limits set under the NDPS Act.
In the chargesheet filed by the ANC, it was stated that on July 10, 2015 between 2 am and 6 am, the ANC raided a spot near the bus stop shed near St Michael Church in Anjuna and arrested Chinonso after he was found in illegal possession of 30 squares of LSD paper.
During the trial, the prosecution examined six witnesses. In his defence, the accused denied the charges and stated that he was falsely implicated by the raiding team.
In his testimony before the Court, ANC inspector Suraj Halarnkar, who led the raiding team, informed that he received specific and reliable information through his source that a male between the age of 25 and 30 years wearing green t-shirt and blue jeans will arrive at the said bus stop between 2 am and 2.15 am to deliver narcotic drugs to his prospective customers on July 10, 2015. The information was forwarded in writing to Deputy Superintendent of Police Anant Virnodkar.
During the raid, the accused Chinonso was searched and two auto-pressed polythene packets were found in the front pocket of his pants. While the first packet contained 30 pieces of LSD square papers weighing 0.53 gms, the second packet contained two sheets of paper with 75 LSD paper squares each weighing a total of 1.63 gms. The suspected contraband was weighed using electronic weighing scale and was tested on the spot using drug kit by the ANC.
While the Court was satisfied that the recovery of the suspected LSD papers from Chinonso’s possession has been substantially proved, the CFSL report failed to certify the second packet as having tested positive for LSD. The CFSL scientist who testified before the Court stated that LSD tends to degrade upon exposure to sunlight, moisture and heat even if it is kept in an envelope. While the raid occurred in July, the samples were tested at CFSL, Hyderabad only in October, 2015.
The Court refused to accept this argument on the belief that necessary precautions were taken by the ANC while storing the exhibits.
The Court also observed that the accused is illegally staying in India without possessing valid documents as he failed to produce a passport, visa and other such papers through the trial.