HC orders Maha govt to pay Rs 2 lakh to Nigerian man wrongly imprisoned in drug case

The Bombay High Court on Friday directed the Maharashtra government to pay Rs 2 lakh compensation to a Nigerian man who was wrongly incarcerated for more than a year because of a typographical error in the chemical analysis report in a drug case.

The Bombay High Court on Friday directed the Maharashtra government to pay Rs 2 lakh compensation to a Nigerian man who was wrongly incarcerated for more than a year because of a typographical error in the chemical analysis report in a drug case. A single bench of Justice Bharati Dangre was hearing the bail plea filed by the 27-year-old Nigerian who was arrested in October 2020 for alleged possession of drugs.

According to the prosecution, the contraband purported to be 116.19 gm of cocaine and a pouch containing 40.73 gm of saffron coloured heart-shaped pills and 4.41 gm of pink pills purported to be ecstasy tablets were recovered from the man.

All the drugs were in commercial quantity and were sent to the forensic science laboratory for chemical analysis (CA).

When the CA report came, it was stated that the drugs found on the Nigerian were not cocaine or ecstasy but Lidocaine, Tapentadol and caffeine. However, the report by the assistant director of the forensic science laboratory stated that Lidocaine and Tapentadol drugs “fall under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act''.

However, the assistant director of the Regional Forensic Science Laboratory, Aurangabad had a year later expressed his regret and corrected the analysis and stated that the contents do not fall under the NDPS Act.

Based on this, the accused approached the high court seeking bail.

On Friday, Justice Dangre ordered for the accused to be released on bail on a surety of Rs 25,000 and directed the state government to pay Rs 2 lakh compensation to him within six weeks.

The court was informed by additional government pleader A A Takalkar that the government did not have any policy for awarding compensation for wrongful arrest, but an inquiry would be initiated against the concerned officer.

To this, Justice Dangre said, ''So you can keep people behind bars and not give compensation just because there is no policy? When it comes to depriving a person of fundamental rights, you require a policy?'' “As an exceptional case, I deem it appropriate to direct the state to pay compensation of Rs 2 lakh within six weeks,” Justice Dangre said, adding that if the state wants to conduct an enquiry, it can recover the amount from the guilty officers after completing the probe.

“Merely because the applicant is a foreign national and has antecedent and he has been indulging in narcotic drugs, does not authorise the state to detain him when the substance found on him was neither a narcotic drug nor a psychotropic substance,” the bench held.