Tasaduq Hussain
Kupwara, May 24: Stating that narcotics are a big challenge for the people in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district, a fast-track court in the district Wednesday convicted two accused persons in an NDPS case.
Addressing a news conference, Prosecution Officer Abdul Rashid Dar at Additional District and Sessions Court Kupwara said that police on 10 December 2020 registered an FIR against two individuals following which a charge sheet was filed by Crime Branch Kashmir on May 25, 2021, in the principal sessions court which was transferred to an additional sessions court which is also the NIA court.
He said that the trial had been going on since then.
“445 grams and 372 grams of heroin were recovered from them,” he informed.
Both accused, he said, belonged to Sopore and were detained at the Bramri area in Kupwara on 10 December, 2020.
He informed that there were a total of 13 witnesses in the case, of which 12 were examined during the trial while 1 passed away during the trial.” He was a witness to the weighing process. Police witnesses withstood the prosecution story. The defense couldn’t extract anything from any witness in favor of the accused persons,” he said.
He said that the court has convicted both the accused person and will be celebrating the quantum of the charge on 29th May. “This case has been decided by the court in two years only. This is a speedy trial. Both the government and the accused have got justice,” he said.
To a question, he said that people feel that the law won’t catch them and the justice system is very weak. “Prosecution is evolving in 2019. We are trying to shape it and work on it. We are an important part of the criminal justice system. We want to send a very strong message to society. People have to be in a very straight jacket. People cannot have any criminal temperament to the rights of society,” he said.
He said that this is not the first convection. “The rate of convection is very low due to two reasons which include the poor quality of investigation. We have to increase the rate of conviction,” he said.
“We have 10 lakh people who are addicted to harmful drugs. 5 lakh among them are very young below the age of 25. 5 lakh among them are using substances mainly brown sugar. Even girls are using brown sugar,” he said while quoting a 2020 survey about substance abuse.
He said that the fast-track court is dealing with simple narcotic offenses and the NIA court is dealing with narco-terrorism cases.
About this particular case, he said it was a case of drug smuggling done for personal benefits.
“It is an achievement. Narcotics is a very big challenge in Kupwara given that people do not even realize sudden deaths among youth,” he said.
