Rs 200 cr ICE seizure: Holes in prosecution case led to acquittal of Kandola, 13 others

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, December 23

The prosecution completely failed from all angles in proving its story correct, which led to the recent acquittal of Ranjit Singh, alias Raja Kandola, and 13 others in the Rs 200 crore ICE (methamphetamine, a party drug) and heroin recovery case of the Jalandhar (Rural) police. The case dates back to June 1, 2012.

A perusal of the 219-page judgement order passed by District and Sessions Judge Nirbhow Singh Gill has shown that the prosecution could neither show the recovery of ICE nor its synthesis as was claimed.

Further, there were so many holes in the narrative that even the statements of the officers involved, including then SP (D) Rajinder Singh, Inspector Inderjit Singh (now dismissed), Inspector Angrez Singh and Inspector Shiv Kumar as prosecution witnesses were found to be not in sync. All of them gave varying statements on the location where the confessional statement of Kandola had been recorded. There was also a lot of difference on the statements of police officials on as to from where they had got the keys of the house in Banga from where the alleged recoveries of drugs and weapon had been made.

While the prosecution story mentioned that the recovered items were hidden outside the house under the stacks of bricks, Inspector Angrez Singh could not tell from where he found them.

He could not even tell the approximate number of keys in the bunch or its material, brass or steel. Kandola was already in jail in another case when he had been booked and the police had conducted raids on the premises in his absence.

Further, the defence lawyers, including Hitesh Puri and Mandeep Sachdev, were able to prove long illegal detentions of the accused at various locations, showing their arrests as per the concocted story, use of stock witnesses, mismatch of locations of inquiry officers and the accused mentioned in the prosecution story with the phone tower locations.

There was a mismatch even of signatures of the inquiry officers in various documents. The statements of the officials of Bharti Telecom and hotel staff, where the accused had been kept in confinement, came handy to falsify the police theories.

While pronouncing the judgement, the court has ordered that accused Nishan Singh, alias Tony, and Ranbir Singh shall be at liberty to move an application to the Jalandhar (Rural) SSP, with regard to their false implication in the case and in case any such application is filed, the matter shall be inquired/investigated into and action taken in accordance with law.