Hyderabad City police to increase the conviction rate in NDPS cases

Hyderabad: A training plan for police officials investigating narcotics-related crimes, with a view to increasing the conviction rate, has been unveiled in Telangana state. Five experienced ACP-rank officials of the Narcotics Investigation Supervision Wing (NISW) will be posted in each of the five city zones.

Training will be imparted to officials right from seizure, arrests, sample collection to preparing charge sheet without loopholes, to achieve this end.

City police commissioner CV Anand said here on Sunday that he appreciated the efforts of the task force in detecting and seizing contraband but there existed a scope for increasing the conviction rate in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) cases. “This is drastically low, compared to the seizures,” he said.

“We have decided to involve a trained ACP-rank officer from Narcotics Investigation Supervision Wing (NISW) officer to supervise the law and order police,” Anand told Deccan Chronicle.

“Some officers are not collecting samples separately from the seized contraband. Suppose there are 100 bags of ganja. We must collect samples from every bag and give these to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) for investigation. These are the main exhibits during the prosecution. Also, the panchnama, filing of FIR, interrogation and collection of technical evidence should be done accurately.

There is a drastic increase in drug seizure. But, law and order police dealing with other crimes and posted on bandobast duties are not able to focus on NDPS cases and are committing mistakes, police sources said.

“We appreciate the decision taken by the commissioner,” said Ahad Qureshi, advocate.