JOIN USAryan Khan case: Stock witnesses in drugs cases, a practice not so uncommon
Aryan Khan getting off the hook in the fake drug case has blown the lid off a not so uncommon practice of law enforcement agencies: the use of fake, stock witnesses for the prosecution.
This is common enough and so prevalent that a search throws up 11,246 results on the indiankanoon.org website. An old practice, it was even portrayed in an old Hindi film, Imaan Dharam, in which Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor hang around the court and are hired to appear as witnesses and give evidence according to the requirement of the case.
Several such stock witnesses were reportedly used in the drug bust case in which Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Director Sameer Wankhede implicated film star Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan. According to a news report, one of them, Adil Fazal Usmani, has been used by the agency in at least five cases since 2020.
Whenever it makes a raid or a drug seizure, the NCB has to prepare a 'panchanama' that provides details of the scene on the spot as supporting evidence in the case. It has to be prepared in front of independent witnesses, the 'pancha', to corroborate the police version.
According to news reports, the NCB has used at least four pancha witnesses several times. Shehbaz Mansuri, one of the witnesses, has been a panch witness in four cases. Two others, Sayyad Zubair Ahmed and Abdul Rehman Ibrahim, have been cited as panch witnesses by the NCB in two cases each this year, said news reports.
Another NCB witness is Fletcher Patel. Patel claimed that he was an Army veteran and a public-spirited citizen only too glad to help government agencies. That does not explain how he happened to be simply passing by wherever the NCB was conducting a raid. It's like making a profession of "passing by", whether Juhu or Colaba, Andheri or the Gateway of India.
Officers in law enforcement agencies do not find it amusing. "What can we do? People don't come forward to tell us what they have seen for themselves. The ordinary citizen doesn't want to get involved in police or court proceedings. We have to catch hold of people we can and use them," said a senior police officer who has served with the NCB. Besides, who would accompany a police party in raids against the drug mafia, especially when it happens at odd hours, he asked.
The NDPS (Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act) cases often see acquittals because courts take a dim view of evidence provided by stock witnesses, treating them as "compromised" or under police influence rather than independent witnesses.
The NDPS Act is a strong law prescribing stringent punishment. While it prescribes very severe punishment for offenders, it also has safeguards to eliminate or minimise the chances of some innocent person being falsely incriminated. The seizure of drugs has to be done in the presence of a gazetted officer or a magistrate, and the accused is given an opportunity to search the cops so that they don't plant drugs on him.
Sometimes the investigating officer does all this only on paper without actually following the prescribed procedure. These cases, where a person or magistrate is shown to be present on paper but wasn't there at the time of seizure, often fall during the trial stage when cross-examination of witnesses brings out inconsistencies and contradictions in the prosecution's case.
In other criminal cases, the police sometimes rely on stock witnesses, and the same lot of witnesses keep deposing in different cases. As a police officer said, "This is often because the ordinary citizen does not want to get involved in the legal hassles. When actual witnesses shy away from deposing, the police find others. These may be persons who have in the past been in the police net for some minor offence, or are police informers, or been associated with the police in some way."
"Why only witnesses to a crime? An ordinary person doesn't come to us to lodge a case or a complaint unless the matter is really serious. Otherwise, people avoid going to the police and getting embroiled in court cases which become an ordeal for them," he added.
Thus, the same person may be a witness in a road accident in Dadra one day, another near Church Gate on another, and theft or burglary in Bandra yet another day. "We have no choice," plead the cops.
That is the way things are if the cops are straight. If there is a mala fide intention to implicate somebody, a false case can be cooked up, evidence planted, fake witnesses put up, and get a person behind bars. Even if (s)he is finally acquitted, the period spent behind bars, the legal hassles and expenses, the loss of reputation and job/occupation and the trauma of the case itself is a punishment for inviting the wrath of powers that be.
There have been cases where men jailed on terror charges were acquitted and released after spending 18 or 23 years of their lives behind bars And no, they are not compensated for their sufferings and losses. One is hearing about it in the media only for Aryan Khan.
(Rajesh Sinha is a journalist)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.