New Delhi, Sep 3 (PTI) A court here has acquitted a man charged under the Arms Act for allegedly carrying four live bullets in his check-in baggage, saying there were “loopholes” in the investigation and the possibility of ammunition “being planted cannot be altogether ruled out”.
The court rapped the Investigating Officer (IO) for a “defective investigation”, saying the officer “has deliberately not complied with the basic rules of investigation, the benefit of which must accrue to the accused.” The court faulted the IO for failing to seize the baggage ID slip, for not visiting the site of the incident and for not getting the CCTV footage, among other aspects of the investigation.
The court was hearing a case where the accused was scheduled to travel from Terminal 1 D of the domestic airport to Lucknow by an Indigo flight on August 6, 2019, and four live bullets were seized from his check-in baggage.
“Prosecution has failed to establish the charge of Section 30 (Punishment for contravention of licence or rule) of the Arms Act, 1959, against the accused owing to various loopholes in the conduct of the investigation and substantial inconsistencies in the evidence of material witnesses,” Metropolitan Magistrate Bharti Garg said in an order dated August 30.
“Resultantly, since the prosecution has failed in proving its case beyond reasonable doubt, the accused Rajesh Prasad Mishra is not held guilty and acquitted,” the judge said.
The court said that foremost, the deposition of the complainant and prosecution witness, who was personnel of DIAL security, was completely silent on how the bag was determined to have belonged to the accused.
It is common knowledge that a passenger does not have any access to his check-in baggage when it reaches the baggage department for screening and the baggage is ordinarily identified with the baggage tag attached to the boarding pass of a passenger, the court said.
However, the complainant did not mention anything about the baggage tag in her court testimony, nor it was placed on record as to when and by whom the boarding pass of the accused was seized, the court said.
There is no documentary evidence either in the form of a seizure list or alike and no inquiry was conducted by the Investigating Officer (IO) regarding the material facts, the court said.
Further, the court noted that the ocular evidence of the complainant had “glaring inconsistencies” and could not be believed without corroboration.
It said that contrary to the statement of the complainant that the bag of the accused was seized by the IO in her presence at the police station, the IO in his cross-examination denied seizing any such bag.
She also said that the bag was produced at the police station, but as per her complaint, four ammunitions were handed over to the Station House Officer (SHO) concerned for appropriate action, the court said.
“It is noteworthy that apart from the substantive evidence of bag, the IO also did not seize the baggage ID slip,” the court said.
“The production of baggage slip and the bag in evidence would have rendered requisite corroboration to the otherwise uncompelling evidence of the complainant,” it said Thus, it remained “inexplicable” how the complainant correlated the baggage which appeared before her during screening with the accused, the court said.
Noting that it was essential on the part of the prosecution to tender the said bag and baggage tag in evidence, the court said that it could be presumed that the best available evidence was withheld from the court, which if produced, would have been unfavourable to the prosecution.
The evidence of another prosecution witness, who was also the recovery witness, was hearsay and inadmissible, the court said noting that in his cross-examination, the witness said that the bullets were not recovered from the bag of the accused in his presence.
“There is no other material on record to prove that the alleged live ammunitions were recovered from the bag of accused and the possibility of it having been planted on accused cannot be altogether ruled out,” the court said.
“Further throwing the prosecution case from the frying pan into the fire is the conduct of defective investigation in the present case. It would be rather safe to say that there has been no investigation at all in true sense, let alone defective investigation,” the court said.
It further said that the IO never visited the spot of the incident and made the entire case against the accused merely on the statement of the complainant at the police station, which was “highly deplorable”.
The court also noted that the CCTV footage of the incident was not procured, despite being available “The laxity shown on the part of IO to even visit the spot of the incident to gather substantive evidence by conducting fair and proper investigation speaks volumes about the partiality in inquiry undertaken by him,” the court said.
The domestic airport police station had registered an FIR against the accused on the basis of the complainant’s statement. PTI MNR RT RT
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