22 Years Later, Supreme Court Frees Two Men in an NDPS Case — Because Police Couldn't Explain Where the Evidence Went for 5 Days

On 29th November 2004, an Inspector in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, stopped two men near Bandariya Tiraha and recovered black, wick-shaped material from the bags they were carrying. It was suspected to be charas. Abdul Rajik was found with 1 kilogram of it. Govind was found with 800 grams. Both were arrested, chargesheeted, tried, convicted and sentenced to eight and ten years' rigorous imprisonment respectively. The Madhya Pradesh High Court upheld the conviction in 2010.

On 16th September 2026, twenty-two years after the arrest, the Supreme Court acquitted both men. Not because the drugs weren't real. Not because the police fabricated the story. They were acquitted because, somewhere between the police station and the Forensic Science Laboratory, the sealed samples of the seized contraband disappeared from the record for five days, and nobody in the prosecution's chain could say where.

What The Prosecution's Own Witnesses Said

The case, Abdul Rajik vs State of M.P. (Criminal Appeal Nos. 1561 and 1562 of 2014, decided as 2026 INSC 1001), had a seizure story that looked routine on paper. An informer tipped off the police that two men, one of them disabled, were carrying charas near an auto-rickshaw stand. A raiding party was formed, panch witnesses were roped in, and the accused were intercepted. Samples were drawn on the spot, sealed, and eventually sent to the FSL at Sagar, which confirmed the substance was charas.

But two of the prosecution's own panch witnesses turned hostile at trial and refused to support the seizure story. That, by itself, isn't unusual in NDPS cases and courts routinely convict on the strength of police testimony alone when it is credible. The trial court did exactly that, relying heavily on the seizure officer's deposition. What eventually unraveled the conviction wasn't witness credibility. It was the paper trail behind the sample that went to the lab.

The Missing Link: How Were The Samples Actually Sealed?

The Supreme Court's bench of Justices Sandeep Mehta and Manmohan went back to the seizure officer's own testimony describing how the samples were drawn and sealed. The deposition described the panchnama, the signatures on it, and the specimen seal impression, but it never said the sample packets themselves carried any identifying signature, thumb impression or seal, and no chit or tag was affixed to them for future identification. When the muddamal (case property) was produced in court, the sample packets were not separately produced or exhibited either.

The Court cross-checked this against the FSL report itself. It too made no mention of the sample packets bearing any signature or thumb impression that could tie them back to the seizure. If a sample cannot be shown to be the same one drawn from the accused's possession on the day of arrest, the report analysing it becomes evidentially worthless, however accurate the chemistry inside it might be.

The Five Days Nobody Could Account For

This is where the case turned decisively. The maalkhana (police malkhana/property room) register showed the samples were deposited on 29th November 2004, the day of arrest. But it recorded no exit entry showing when, or in whose custody, the samples left the police station for the laboratory. The one document the prosecution did produce, a forwarding letter from the Office of the Superintendent of Police naming a police constable as the carrier, was dated 1st December 2004. The FSL report, however, recorded that the same constable delivered the samples on 6th December 2004, a gap of five clear days.

Nobody explained where the sealed samples sat, or in whose hands, during those five days. The constable who carried them was never examined as a witness. The malkhana in-charge's evidence was silent on whether the samples remained sealed and secure in that window. For a substance carrying an 8 to 10-year sentence, the Court held, this is not a technicality that can be waved away.

Section 52-A NDPS Act: A Safeguard The Police Never Used

The Court also flagged something more structural. Section 52-A of the NDPS Act requires that seized contraband be produced before a Magistrate, who supervises the drawing of representative samples, certifies the inventory, and allows photographs and a certified list to stand in as primary evidence without the bulky muddamal being dragged to every hearing. It exists precisely to rule out the possibility of tampering during the investigation.

In this case, that procedure was never followed at all. Citing its own earlier rulings in Narcotics Control Bureau vs Kashif (2024) and Bharat Aambale vs State of Chhattisgarh (2025), the Supreme Court reiterated that non-compliance with Section 52-A does not automatically void a trial, but total non-compliance is a serious factor when assessing whether the prosecution has proved safe custody of the samples. Here, there was no attempt whatsoever to invoke the Magistrate's supervision.

"We Burned A Piece Of It" Is Not Forensic Science

One more detail did the prosecution no favours. The seizure officer testified that the contraband's identity as charas was first confirmed at the spot by burning a small piece of it. The Supreme Court was unimpressed, holding there was no scientific basis on record to show that burning a substance can reliably identify it as charas. A field test like this cannot substitute for a proper laboratory report, and once that report itself was discredited for want of link evidence, there was nothing credible left to prove the substance was charas at all.

The Supreme Court's Ruling

Putting all of this together, the Court held that the chain of custody had been "totally breached," causing a "total collapse of the sanctity and integrity of the samples." With the FSL report discarded, the prosecution had no admissible evidence left to prove that what was recovered from Abdul Rajik and Govind was in fact charas within the meaning of the NDPS Act. The convictions recorded by the trial court in 2006 and affirmed by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 2010 were set aside, and both men, on bail since their appeals, were acquitted and discharged of their bail bonds.

Why Every Law Student And Practising Lawyer Should Read This Case Closely

This judgment is a masterclass in a skill that no law school lecture teaches as well as a real case does: building, and tearing apart, a chain of custody. Two men served years in the shadow of an NDPS conviction not because the underlying facts were re-argued, but because a defence lawyer, and eventually the Supreme Court, traced every hand the sample passed through and found a five-day gap nobody could close. That is drafting and cross-examination skill, not luck.

If you are a law student or a young advocate who wants to actually practise this kind of forensic, document-driven advocacy, rather than just read about it, that is exactly what Into Legal World's Advanced Legal Drafting 6.0 course is built to train you for, covering evidence-based drafting, cross-examination strategy, and how to construct arguments around procedural safeguards like Section 52-A that most practitioners never learn to use properly until years into practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Why did the Supreme Court acquit Abdul Rajik and Govind after their conviction was upheld twice?

Because the prosecution could not prove an unbroken chain of custody for the seized samples. A five-day gap between the samples leaving police custody and reaching the Forensic Science Laboratory, with no witness or document explaining it, made the FSL report unreliable, and without that report there was no admissible proof the substance was charas.

Q2. What is "link evidence" in an NDPS case?

Link evidence is the unbroken documentary and testimonial trail showing that the sample tested at the laboratory is the very same sample drawn from the accused at the time of seizure, covering sealing, storage, and every hand it passed through until the FSL received it.

Q3. What does Section 52-A of the NDPS Act require, and why did it matter here?

Section 52-A requires seized narcotics to be produced before a Magistrate, who supervises sample-drawing and certifies an inventory, photographs, and a sample list as primary evidence. In this case, the police never approached a Magistrate at all, which the Court treated as a serious factor undermining the reliability of the sample custody.

Q4. Does non-compliance with Section 52-A automatically lead to acquittal in NDPS cases?

No. The Supreme Court has held in earlier rulings, including Narcotics Control Bureau vs Kashif (2024), that non-compliance alone does not automatically vitiate a trial. What matters is whether the lapse, combined with other gaps like broken link evidence, causes real prejudice to the accused, as it did here.

Q5. Was a field test of burning the substance enough to prove it was charas?

No. The Supreme Court held that burning a piece of the seized substance on the spot has no scientific basis for identifying it as charas, and cannot substitute for a properly conducted, custody-verified forensic laboratory report.

Keywords

NDPS Act Supreme Court judgment, Abdul Rajik vs State of MP, chain of custody NDPS, link evidence narcotics case, Section 52-A NDPS Act, charas seizure case, NDPS acquittal 2026, Supreme Court criminal appeal 1561 of 2014, FSL report NDPS, forensic sample custody, criminal law drafting course, Advanced Legal Drafting 6.0, Into Legal World.

Stay Updated

For more Supreme Court case analyses like this one, join Into Legal World's WhatsApp channel.