‘Seized narcotics wasn’t kept at designated facility’
Panaji: The district and sessions court, North Goa, acquitted Nigerian national Domnic Nweke in a 2023 drugs case after the prosecution failed to produce the seized ‘muddemal’ property before the court and could not establish the case due to hostile panch witnesses.
The court also directed the superintendent of police (SP), anti-narcotics cell (ANC), Goa Police, to conduct an investigation into the non-deposit of the ‘muddemal’ property and file a report before the court within six months.
Nweke was arrested by the ANC police on January 13, 2023, and suspected cocaine worth Rs 5.50 lakh was seized from him.
In an order passed on September 19, Artikumari N Naik, additional sessions judge (fast track court-1), Merces, Tiswadi, observed that the investigating officer had not kept the ‘muddemal’ property in the designated storage facility but at the police station, which violated provisions of the NDPS Act, 1985.
“Since the chargesheet shows that MO property is kept at the police station but some MO property shown to be sent along with the chargesheet which are never deposited before the court, and hence this aspect also has to be investigated as to why there are false submissions in the chargesheet about deposit of the MO property before the court,” the judge observed.
The judge further observed that the narcotic substance allegedly recovered from Nweke was not before the court and that the investigating officer had not provided any explanation for its absence.
The judge said the substance, valued at approximately Rs 5.50 lakh, needed to be traced and investigated as to where it had disappeared, and why it had not been produced before the court despite repeated intimations by the public prosecutor to the investigating officer.
