High court restrains drug tests on two accused in stamp scam

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the fake stamp scam was yesterday restrained by the Mumbai High Court from conducting scientific tests on the Anil Gote and Ramachandra Rama Reddy until January 27.

Admitting the petitions filed by Gote, a MLA, and Reddy, suspended officer of Nashik Security Press, Justice V G Palshikar and Justice P V Kakade allowed SIT to prepare for conducting the tests but restrained it from injecting chemicals or drugs. A similar petition by another accused Dilip Kamath did not come up for hearing yesterday.

The two accused had challenged the order of the special court of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in Pune on December 15 of allowing the SIT to conduct P-300 brain-fingerprinting, lie detector and narco-analysis tests on them.

Defence counsel Sayaji Nangre said that the tests involved injecting drugs into the body and the accused could not be forcibly injected. The tests violated the Article 20 (3) of the Indian Constitution which states no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself. The accused also pointed out that materials collected by doctors could not be used as evidence as they were not part of the SIT.

Public prosecutors Raja Thakre and A Chimalkar argued that the tests did not violate the Constitution since they helped to give direction in the investigation without hindering the probe.

The MCOCA had earlier ordered tests on Telgi, Gote, Reddy Kamath, Anil Shah, Manoj Mehta, Abdul Azim Telgi, Abdul Rashid Kulkarni and Dattatreya Dal. Kamath and Dal are suspended cops while Kulkarni is a lawyer and Azim brother of Telgi.

In another development, arrested former Mumbai police chief R. S. Sharma filed a petition in the Mumbai High Court on Monday challenging his arrest under the MCOCA by the SIT for his alleged involvement in the stamp case. He was arrested on December 1 for nine acts of omission and commission in the case and for his failure as a public servant to discharge his duties.