Peddling a concoction

Why is the Delhi Police acting so energetically in the Rahul Mahajan case in 7 Safdarjung Road?

Sandeep Yadav Delhi

Not a month had passed since the previous occupant of
7 Safdarjung Road, Delhi

, Pramod Mahajan, had died after being shot. Now the late leader’s only son, Rahul, was involved in a case that gets more curious by the day. Media reports indicate that empty champagne bottles, glasses and the urn containing Pramod Mahajan’s ashes occupied the same table in the same residence on the night of June 1-2. Reports point towards heroin being snorted, eventually leading to Rahul having to be hospitalised and Pramod’s secretary, Bibek Moitra to be cremated.

 

For a political party that sat on a moral high horse the series of reported events had to be explained. A bereaving son was transformed into an irresponsible person. Sushma Swaraj of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was quick to claim the matter as internal to the Mahajan family, and the others followed suit. The Delhi Police, which is still recovering from the High Court’s admonition in the Jessica Lal murder case, took it to another extreme, accusing the young man of being involved in drug dealing. Rahul was booked under Sections 21, 25, 27, and 29 of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act), besides Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

 

 

By casting the net wide, the police appear to have weakened their own case. They have booked Rahul Mahajan under NDPS Act, 27 (A), financing drug deals and harbouring drug dealers. The courts disagreed with the police when they tried to stop Rahul from getting a bail. "The police could not bring on record the evidence pointing to a series of transactions of narcotic drugs by the accused to cover the present case under the ambit of Section 27-A," said Special Judge Swarna Kanta Mehra in her order granting bail to Rahul.

 

 

Under the NDPS Act, the police have to follow strictly laid-out procedure before making any seizure of narcotics from an accused. These mandatory provisions require them to recover the contraband goods in the presence of independent witnesses and gazetted officers. “The police case is very weak and will not stand a ground in the court. There has been no recovery of any drug from Rahul to establish any case under Section 27 of the NDPS Act. The only recovery is from Bibek’s pocket and that too in the absence of a gazetted officer,” says Sunil Mittal, the Counsel for Rahul. The police is not too worried about this. “There is exemption in the law on the presence of a gazetted officer in certain circumstances and it would not be a problem when the case comes up for trial in the court”, said a senior police officer at the Tughlaq Road Police Station.