Ranchi: In Jharkhand, the police arrest drug dealers and send them to jail. It also files a charge sheet, but fails to punish the accused during the trial in the court. The data of decisions coming after the trial of related cases confirms this fact. In the year 2022, the trial of a total of 200 cases registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS Act), while the trial of 124 cases registered under the Excise Act was completed.
In cases related to NDPS Act, the conviction rate was only 47-50 percent. At the same time, the punishment rate in the Excise Act was 12.90 percent. In these cases, most of the people were acquitted ‘due to lack of evidence’. That is, during the investigation of the above cases, the police did not collect enough evidence to punish the accused.
This is the weak link of the police:
The most important thing is that in most of the cases related to NDPS Act and Excise Act, Jharkhand Police conducts raids and registers cases on the basis of its information. In such cases, most of the witnesses are also from the police. Surprisingly, nine cases registered under the NDPS Act failed in the court during the trial due to the witnesses turning hostile.
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Accused released:
Lower Bazar police had arrested Mo Sonu on 17 January 2014. The police had registered a case against him for having 52 packets of brown sugar. In this case, the arrest witness turned hostile during the trial. Other witnesses also did not support the prosecution’s story. At the same time, the testimony of the investigator and the police officer who registered the case was not even conducted. For this reason, on 10 February 2023, the court acquitted the accused.