Ahmedabad: A special NIA court on Monday acquitted seven persons — six Pakistani nationals and an Indian — of charges of smuggling 237kg of heroin from Pakistan to India via the sea route. It, however, found the six Pakistani nationals to have entered the Indian territory illegally and sentenced them to eight years’ imprisonment.Special NIA judge H R Rawal stated, “The prosecution has failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that accused No. 1 to 6 (Pakistani nationals) have committed offence under Sec. 120B, 201 of IPC, Sec. 17 and 18 of UAPA, Secs. 23, 28, 29, 30 and 32(B)(e) of NDPS Act and accused No. 7 has committed the offence under Secs. 28, 29, 30 of NDPS Act …”The court, however, held them guilty of entering the Indian waters without any permit and punished them with a jail term and fined each of them Rs 52,000 under the Foreigners Act. Documents recovered from them established their Pakistani identity. They have been behind bars for over seven years now.In May 2019, the officials of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and Indian Coast Guard (ICG) intercepted a Pakistani fishing boat (PFB), Al-Madina, upon receiving an input that it was carrying a huge quantity of contraband. The agencies claimed that upon warning the boat, it tried to escape by throwing packets of contraband into the sea. The contraband was recovered and six crew members from the PFB were arrested.Besides, an Indian fisherman, Ramjhan Ghani Pilani, was also arrested on the allegation that the contraband was to be delivered to his boat, Fezan-e-Kirmani. He responded to a radio message on a frequency he was not supposed to, and this revealed his involvement in the conspiracy.From DRI, the probe was transferred to the National Investigation Agency, which prosecuted all seven accused under the NDPS Act, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), IPC and the Foreigners Act for conspiracy and narco-terrorism in India. The Pakistani nationals’ counsel, H A Patel, raised the issue of lack of evidence in this case, and the Indian citizen’s advocate, L R Pathan, examined a defence witness, who had accompanied him on the voyage, to establish that Pilani, to refute the investigators’ allegation that he had waited for the PFB for a week at one spot.After the trial, the court said that the secret input received by DRI, on which the operation was carried out and which was passed on to another agency, was never reduced to writing, and no evidence was placed of having received the input.The court concluded that “the narcotic drugs admittedly is not recovered from the conscious possession of accused Nos. 1 to 6 and the prosecution has failed to establish that the said accused Nos. 1 to 6 on seeing the ICG Ship Arinjay threw the narcotic substance contained in PP bags into sea …”The court also said that officers of ICG Ship Arinjay “have neither videographed nor photographed the recovery of narcotic drugs from the sea and have also not stated by which mode/instrument/equipment the said seven PP bags were recovered from the sea, thereby rendering reasonable doubt as to procedure carried out by them”.The court also rejected the allegations of raising funds for narco-terrorism or the Pakistani nationals being members of any terrorist outfit.
