‘Extremely Sorry State’: Court after Goa says no lab to test seized Narcotics

Peeved by his continued incarceration & denial of bail despite the drugs he was accused of possessing not even being tested by the laboratories that the Goa Police relies on, Nigerian national Michael Okafor has approached the Bombay High Court’s Goa bench, seeking to direct the state to operationalise the state’s forensic laboratory. It was set up back in 2013.

Agreeing with the petition, the Bombay High Court’s Goa bench has pulled up the Goa Govt for the “sorry state of affairs”, which it said affected “the rights of the accused persons to speedy trial, which is one of the facets of Article 21 of the Constitution of India”.

Lawyer K Poulekar, who argued the case for the Nigerian, said that “The laboratory was to be operational in Goa in 2013. At present the laboratory can only test for ganja & charas. A majority of substances that are usually seized by the Goa police in narcotics raids include Ecstasy, LSD, MDMA & cocaine. They cannot be tested in the state & samples are sent to the CFSL Laboratory in Hyderabad & it takes more than a year to receive the report".

Poulekar said that “Given these delays the trial takes four to five years to complete which is around half the sentence. & if they are acquitted after the trial, who will give them their life back?"

Okafor was arrested on Oct 19, 2019 with substances suspected to be LSD of a quantity little less than one gram.

The HC took serious cognisance of the repeated delays in setting up the laboratory.

“It is quite unfortunate that though the NDPS Act came into force in 1985 & there are several prosecutions launched under this Act in the state of Goa, till date there are no proper facilities for testing the seized materials. As a result, the prosecutions are delayed, the suspects by default are released on bail, & then flee from justice.

The High Court bench of Justice MS Sonak & Justice MS Jawalkar said that “Thus the very operation of the NDPS Act is frustrated on account of non availability of proper facilities in the state of Goa itself. This is an extremely sorry state which should have been redressed by the authorities with greater sense of urgency & responsibility".

It is high time that some effective steps are taken by the state government to set up a full fledged laboratory in Goa itself, where such drugs & psychotropic substances can be tested within a reasonable period, the court said.

The Court has also hinted that they delay in operationalising the lab could be deliberate in order to enable the accused persons to avail of ‘default bail’, citing the long delays in receiving lab reports.

The High Court said that “There is absolutely no explanation as to why since the establishment of the GFSL in 2013, no efforts were made to procure the standard samples all this time. There is no explanation as to why procurement of such standard samples which, we were informed would cost the state government an amount hardly Rs 25 lakh or thereabouts took so long & still taking so long. For the present at least, we would not like to accept that this delay is deliberate & for extraneous considerations. However, if such a position continues, further probes will become necessary".

The HC directed the Govt to make the lab operational within a period of 3 months. 

Source Link