|
Top court lets free women 'coz
they were frisked by male cops
WSN Network
New Delhi: Male
officers cannot frisk women for the purpose of confiscating
contraband material like narcotics as it is illegal and would render
the prosecution’s case invalid, India's Supreme Court has held.
The apex court
said any personal search of a woman by male officers is violative of
subsection 4 of Section 50 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic
Substances Act.
“Personal search
of the accused was conducted by DSP Baldev Singh, which was
violative of the provisions of the Act,” a Bench of Justices S.B.
Sinha, Mukundakam Sharma and H.L. Dattu observed.
Search of women,
if any, can be conducted only by women personnel, the apex court
said.
The Bench passed
the ruling while dismissing an appeal filed by the Punjab government
challenging the acquittal order passed by the Punjab and Haryana
High Court in favour of an old lady — Gurnam Kaur — and
daughters-in-law Ranjit Kaur and Gurjit Kaur.
A sessions court
had convicted the trio for possessing narcotic substances and
sentenced them to 12 years’ rigorous imprisonment.
However, on an
appeal, the High Court acquitted the accused on the ground that
there were several infirmities in the prosecution’s case, besides
holding as illegal the search of the women by male officers.
The women were
arrested by the police, who claimed that they recovered heroin and
opium from their house at Thatha village in
Amritsar
and DSP Baldev Singh claimed to have personally conducted the
search. It was claimed that the trio were searched when they were
sitting together on a cot and the contraband was recovered from
beneath it.
As an
afterthought, the authorities claimed a lady ASI, Rajinder Kaur, was
also involved in the search.
“Respondent
Gurnam Kaur admittedly is an old lady . The others are her
daughters-in-law. Curiously, all of them were found sitting on the
same bed beneath which the contraband had allegedly been kept.
“That by itself
does not establish that all of them were in conscious possession of
the narcotics,” the court observed.
18
March 2009
|
Read Also