Peddling a concoction

Why is the Delhi Police acting so ardently in the Rahul Mahajan drug case?

Sandeep Yadav Delhi

Not a month had passed since the 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 from the party 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.

The case against Rahul stands on the revelations and confessions made by Sahil Zaroo and his friends Trishay, Karan and Rahul Malhotra who visited 7 Safdarjung Road that fateful night. The disclosures and confessions made by the co-accused in a criminal offence are of little evidential value under Sections 25 and 27 of the Indian Evidence Act (EIA), unless drugs are shown to have been recovered from the person. No drug has been found on anybody here. In fact, it would appear that Sahil accepted buying heroine on the behest of Bibek and provided money for the same. The investigation has also revealed that of the five pouches of one gram heroine, only two were used by Bibek, Rahul and Sahil. Five files of the powder were drawn and two each were snorted by Rahul and Bibek while one was taken by Sahil in the lobby of the house. It is clear here that Rahul neither gave the money for the drugs nor did he know Abdullaha, the Nigerian drug peddler, from whom Sahil had purchased the drug. Abdullaha, during his interrogation, had been quite co-operative with the police, and confessed that Sahil contacted him. His mobile phone entry does not have Rahul’s number nor has he ever met him. Sahil knew him through Prem Taneja, a one-time pimp. Abdullaha also confessed of being unaware of the fact that the pouches he handed to Sahil were in fact heroine and not cocaine as demanded by Sahil.

If these are the facts, will the police be able to justify the NDPS Act 27 (A) that it has imposed on Rahul? The police thesis has also been built on Sahil’s statement in which he claimed that Rahul asked him to keep Rs 2,500, the balance remaining after the purchase of the narcotic substance. The police believe that the balance was left with Sahil to be adjusted against future dealings. But the investigation team has failed to distinguish between financing one single transaction for personal consumption and a series of financial transactions. Clearly, a single transaction is being stretched to bring the case under Section 27 (A). The assumption that Rs 2,500 was left with Sahil for future transaction cannot be substantiated.

Harish Sharma, private secretary of the late Pramod Mahajan, who instructed the domestic help to take Rahul and Bibek to Apollo Hospital, has been charged with “destroying the evidence”. Sharma claims that when he reached the hospital he was confronted by the doctor who inquired what Rahul had consumed. It was then he called the domestic help and asked them what these people had drunk and eaten. According to him, Ganesh described the scene of the room which had empty bottles, glasses, two empty white pouches and the fact that the room smelled foul as the two had vomited repeatedly there. Sharma owns up that he instructed Ganesh to clean the room and bring the two pouches to the hospital. “What will you tell your servant if somebody vomits in the house? Obviously, one would ask him to clean the mess. I did the same,” explains Sharma who is out on a bail. He gave the pouches to the doctor, which were sealed and later sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) for evaluating their content. There is little clarity about how much quantity was held back and what was given to the doctors.

“The case has become a trial by the media. Rahul is paying the price of being a celebrity son. If police had not charged him with severe sections then media would have alleged that the police have made a weak case under pressure. It is to save themselves that the police have gone overboard,” believes Sudhanshu Mittal, a close aide of the deceased Mahajan. Mittal also stands by  Sharma’s decision to take the duo to the far-off Apollo Hospital. “We all know what government hospitals are like. We wanted the best available treatment for our kid,” he says.

The Apollo Hospital has also come under the scanner for declaring Rahul drug-free and keeping him on the ventilator when it was not required. Later, when the Lal’s Pathology Lab report contradicted the Apollo report, the hospital cleared that it did not have the facilities to carry out the qualitative tests but only the quantitative drug tests. But when they addressed the press conference then they presented the report as a self-evident truth.

The police smell foul play and around 150 hospital staff have been lined up for questioning at the Chanakyapuri Police Station.

It is not clear what will come out of it as it is the same police that had handled the murder case of the former model Jessica Lal so casually that all the eight accused were set free. The police seems to get paralysed when it deals with crimes involving the rich and famous. Police sources claim that the police officers posted in the New Delhi district, where most of the VVIPs are located, have a tendency to cover up on the crimes of this class. Only friendly officers are posted in these parts. Crimes by the delinquent progenies of the political class are hushed up without attracting media attention. There are a number of incidents of accidents, rapes and other crimes committed by spoiled brats that never hit the headlines.

A similar scene may be played out now. Was it not the present Commissioner of Delhi Police, KK Paul, Joint Commissioner then, who conducted a probe years ago and reported that the investigators in the case are working in collusion with the accused? No action was taken then. Questions were also raised about Additional Sessions Judge SL Bhayana who acquitted them all, and received a promotion just four days after delivering the infamous judgement. This is not new. Santosh Singh, son of an IPS officer, was accused of and acquitted for Priyadarshan Mattoo’s murder. The judge while delivering the verdict said that he knew that Santosh had committed the crime but is being given the benefit of the doubt. Why is the police being so active now? Is it to redeem their image, or is it that they are coming under political pressure from someone within the BJP or the Congress?

Addressing a round-table conference on police reforms a few years ago retired Chief Justice of India JS Verma expressed the need for insulating the police from political pressure. In the context of Gujarat he had asked how the same police in Gujarat took swift action against terrorists in Akshardham but was ineffective in controlling the carnage in Gujarat. Similar questions arise over this case.