Raipur: Chhattisgarh high court has indicted the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) for lapses in a major narcotics case and ordered a departmental inquiry into the escape of a key accused from the probe agency’s office.A Division Bench of chief justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal, delivering a common judgement on July 1 in appeals arising from a 2021 ganja seizure, said investigations under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act demand “the highest standards of fairness, professionalism and strict adherence to the procedure established by law.”The court warned that any deviation “not only jeopardises the rights of the accused but also undermines the credibility of the criminal justice system.”The HC directed its registry to immediately forward a copy of the judgement to the Director General, DRI, New Delhi, for his personal attention. It asked the DG to conduct a departmental inquiry into the conduct of all officers who supervised the investigation, including the circumstances that enabled the accused to escape from DRI custody, and to fix accountability. The Bench reserved its strongest criticism for the escape of key accused Bandari Chandrashekhar alias Pintu from the DRI office during the probe.“What further shocks the conscience of this court,” the judges observed, “is the admitted fact that one of the principal accused … succeeded in escaping from the custody of the DRI office itself during the course of the investigation.”The court said such an escape reflected a “complete collapse of vigilance, supervision and institutional discipline” within the agency. Viewed with other procedural irregularities, it presented a “deeply disturbing picture” of how the case was handled, the Bench said.It also directed the DRI chief to introduce effective supervisory mechanisms and periodic training to ensure future NDPS investigations meet statutory standards.The case relates to seizure of 833.271 kg of ganja allegedly being transported from Andhra Pradesh to Uttar Pradesh in Oct 2021. A Special NDPS Court convicted five accused based on search, seizure, sampling and call records.Reversing the convictions, the high court held the prosecution suffered from fundamental procedural lapses in search, seizure, sampling and chain of custody, making the investigation unreliable.“The appellants who are in custody shall be released forthwith, if not required in any other case,” the court said.
