Man let off in 11-yr ganja case, court flays cops

Accused jailed in 2013, cops file chargesheet 5 years later; botched probe paved way for acquittal, judgment says

-  SIDDHARTH PRABHAKAR

WHEN Pasal was arrested by Sub-Inspector Janarthanan for alleged possession of 1.1kg ganja near a low-income settlement in Triplicane, he was 24, Mumbai Indians had just won their first IPL trophy, Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister and both J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi were alive. By the time he was acquitted last month, Singh had long retired from politics, the two Dravidian leaders are dead, MI had won the IPL five times and Pasal had marked his 34th birthday behind bars.

Eleven years after the D5 Marina Police arrested him, a Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act court in Chennai, on April 24, acquitted him in the 2013 case and a similar case registered in 2019, while slamming the city police for "miserably failing to prove" the crime despite having caught him "red-handed".