Kerala Excise Minister MB Rajesh expressed 'regret' over the developments and promised immediate steps to write off the pending case as fake.
Sheela Sunny after her arrest in February. (Supplied)
“I spent 72 days in jail without committing any crime.” That is just the tip of the iceberg of 51-year-old Sheela Sunny’s ordeal.
“As an ordinary middle-aged woman with the bare minimum exposure to the world outside, I never had any exposure to narcotics. I don’t even know what it would look like,” the beauty parlour-owner, who was trapped in a fake narcotics case in Kerala, told South First.
After the alleged seizure of synthetic drugs (LSD stamps) from her bag and vehicle on 27 February, Kerala’s Excise Department arrested Sheela from the central Kerala town of Chalakudy, and ensured her remand custody for the next 72 days.
As per a PTI report on Monday, 3 July, a source in the state’s Excise Commissioner’s Office confirmed that the official who arrested Sheela had been suspended.
As the charges against her were severe in nature, Sheela had to approach the Kerala High Court to get bail.
She was released on bail on 10 May. However, her financial stability had collapsed by that time.
The reopening of the beauty parlour was also not an option: The owner of the building where it was located told her that he would not rent it out to anybody involved in the peddling of narcotics.
Sheela Sunny after her release from Jail. (Supplied)
“Now I wish to know the reasons for my arrest and incarceration. I never had any known enemy, and I never committed any offence,” said Sheela when South First contacted her over the phone.
In all these days, the state Excise Department said it was acting on a tip-off received through an anonymous WhatsApp message that termed Sheela a longtime drug peddler.
“The officials searched my handbag, picked up some stamp-like articles, and said they were LSD stamps. They also said that they had received a tip that an LSD stamp was present in my scooter. They asked my son to accompany them to the scooter and picked up another packet from the cover where I had kept the vehicle’s documents,” she said, recalling events from the afternoon of 27 February.
But the test results by the Kochi-based and state-run chemical examiner’s laboratory of the confiscated materials brought the case to an anti-climax.
Sheela received a copy of the test result on 27 June, much after her release on bail, confirming that the seized packets contained no synthetic drug.
When the innocent Sheela caught the attention of the local media, she declared that she would approach the courts to regain her lost dignity and basic human rights.
The state immediately went into damage-control mode. Kerala Excise Minister MB Rajesh contacted her over the phone on Sunday, 2 July, to express “regret” over the developments that led to the arrest, and promised immediate steps to get the pending case dismissed as fake.
The same day, Rajesh wrote in a Facebook post that strict action would be taken against all those responsible for falsely implicating Sheela in the drug possession case.
Kerala Excise Minister MB Rajesh. (Supplied)
He further said that the state government would inform the concerned court that she was innocent, and steps would be taken to ensure no one else suffered the way she did.
The minister said that he consoled Sheela over the phone after her plight came to his attention. He also claimed that Sheela had expressed satisfaction and gratitude for the steps taken by the government in the matter.
The senior excise officer who led the investigation against Sheela has been suspended, and efforts are being made to capture the person who gave the false information to the department.
As soon as Sheela told the local police that she doubted the role of a Bengaluru-based relative of her son’s wife, that person reportedly went underground. A police party has left for Bengaluru to trace that person.
In the meantime, the suspended officer justified his action by saying that he seized original LSD stamps, and their narcotic contents might have evaporated by the time they were tested in the laboratory.
The official told a Malayalam television channel that he received the tip-off through WhatsApp from an unknown informer, and he never attempted to trace that person’s whereabouts as that was against the statute.
However, Sheela reiterated that she often told the investigating officer that she was framed by somebody unknown who placed the stuff in her bag and scooter.
However, she said, the officer never heeded her claims, and concluded that she was peddling drugs to tide over her financial difficulties.
She said that the Excise Department was not even ready to collect and go through the CCTV footage from the buildings around the area where she was arrested.
“It looked like a planned move. The excise sleuths came to my parlour and said they had received information that I was selling synthetic drugs at my shop. They fished out a packet each from my bag and vehicle. They did not check anywhere else as if they had clear information,” said Sheela.
Now, even though the lab test proved her innocence, the incident has ended up inflicting irreparable damage to her, her family, and her business, said Sheela.
“I had taken out a loan to run the parlour. I lost my business. Relatives and society ostracised my family. I spent 72 days in jail,” she lamented.
Sheela’s counsel Niffin P Kareem told South First that she would be filing a miscellaneous criminal petition in the high court soon, demanding action against the excise officials who implicated her in the false case.
He said she would, through the plea, also seek compensation for the defamation and ordeals that she had to undergo.
“We received the copy of the report from the chemical examiner’s laboratory, Kakkanad, only by the end of June, though it was dated 12 May. Even though the district court in Thrissur declined the bail petition, the high court granted her bail on 10 May after we filed an appeal. I have to finalise our further legal move with the client based on the chemical analysis report,” said Kareem.
The district’s government pleader, Advocate Sunilkumar, said he advised the Excise Department to file the final report in the district court soon, informing it that Sheela was not culpable and the case could be closed.
The court would be informed that the investigation against Sheela was being dropped after the receipt of the chemical analysis report.
Meanwhile, the investigation conducted by the Excise Department’s Crime Branch is heading for a complex phase as the excise inspector who originally “detected the LSD” refused to reveal who alerted him to the “presence of LSD” in Sheela’s bag and vehicle.
”It was a WhatsApp call. It would be immaterial to track the whereabouts of such informers,” the suspended officer said.
The real conspirator who planted the alleged “LSD stamps” could be tracked only after the inspector reveals who had given the wrong alert, according to legal experts.
It would be tough to force the inspector to reveal the information as investigators were normally not expected to disclose the names of their informants.
However, legal experts pointed out that this was a fabricated case, and thus the investigating officer would have to divulge the name of the informants.
Kakkanad Regional Laboratory Assistant Chemical Examiner Jyothi P Mallya submitted a report on 12 May certifying that the stamps seized from Sheela did not contain LSD.
Although the Excise Department realised it was a trumped-up charge, it neither informed the victim of the test result nor took steps to rectify the officials’ mistake.
To justify its stand, the Excise Department claimed that the inspector who effected the arrest was transferred.
It is learnt that the decision to move the official out of the station was taken before the laboratory test result was received.
The alleged LSD stamps sent by the Irinjalakuda Excise Circle Office through the Sessions Court in Thrissur for the chemical test were received at the laboratory in Kakkanad on 1 April. This, despite the arrest taking place on 27 February.
Although such chemical tests usually take months, in this case, the result was made available within one and a half months.
The laboratory sent the test report to the excise range officer and circle officer of Chalakudy on 12 May. They received the report within a day. Oddly, the Excise Department did not inform the victim of this fact.
Sheela obtained the chemical test result through a request submitted by her advocate in court.
The Excise Department explained away its conduct by merely stating that its Crime Branch was investigating the officials’ failure. But the department neither summoned the officer who arrested her nor sought details about the incident.
He was suspended only after the issue evolved into a controversy, and the suspected fake informer had gone underground by that time.
”The jail term shattered me mentally and physically. I thought of committing suicide many times. Now, I have only one determination. I will not rest until those who conspired against me get punishment,” Sheela said.
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