PESHAWAR, Nov 28: The trial courts dealing with narcotics cases have been destroying case properties without giving notice to the accused, leaving them in a disadvantaged position, claimed local lawyers.

In the light of judgments of the superior courts including the Supreme Court it is binding on the courts conducting trials of accused in narcotics cases to issue a notice to the accused before destroying the seized contraband.

The superior courts have observed that it was the right of an accused to request the trial court or even the appellate court for chemical examination of entire seized consignment so as to ascertain whether the entire consignment is a narcotics substance or not.

The Supreme Court in one of the cases (SCMR 2003 Ali Mohammad versus State) observed that the accused had the right to pray before the trial court or the high court that entire case property be sent to the chemical examiner for report as to challenge  that  entire  case property  was  not  narcotic substance/drug.

On the basis of the same judgment, the Sindh High Court accepted an appeal on the ground that the trial court had destroyed the case property, which was heroin in that case, without informing the accused.

In that case (PLD 2003 Karachi 606), the high court observed: “Accused had a right in the circumstances to make a prayer before the trial court as well as before the high court for referring the entire case property to the chemical examiner for report as to whether it was or was not a narcotics substance, but the trial court had got the case property illegally destroyed without issuing any such notice to the accused and without affording him due opportunity of being heard, who had been deprived of making any such request either before the trial court or before the appellate court and thus stood seriously prejudiced.”

Different lawyers dealing in narcotics cases said that the trial courts have normally not been issuing notice to the accused in such cases and thus after destruction of the seized consignment their cases were mostly decided on the basis of few samples  collected by the agency concerned including  Anti-Narcotics Force and police.

In concocted cases the entire evidence were fabricated by the agencies and in such cases the seized consignments were the main proof of innocence of an accused, said advocate Noor Alam Khan, chairman of Voice of Prisoners. In such cases, he added, except a small portion of the seized stuff, the remaining consignment, which the agencies claimed of seizure, was not narcotics substance.

Mr Khan said that the courts had also not been calculating percentage of narcotics substance in the seized consignment. He added that although under section 3 of the Control of Narcotics Substance Act, 1997, it was binding on the trial court to calculate percentage of narcotics substance, but the courts normally overlook this provision.

An official of the ANF confided that most of the concocted cases were due to misinformation of the concerned informant as the informant always wanted to prove his efficiency and for that purpose he sometimes trap innocent persons.

In such cases, he said they had to face problem as the seized stuff was substandard and in some of the cases even not narcotics substance. He added that they were often in hurry to destroy the case property before any application by the accused for chemical examination of the entire consignment. He added that under the law the trial court had to issue certificate to the agency before the destruction.