Now, Goa’s ANC has a lot to answer

After revelations about a notorious Israeli drug dealer's nexus with cops, here comes more damning news for the Goa police. In a development that has left the Goa police red-faced, the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Hyderabad, has said a sample of "brown sugar" sent for tests by the anti-narcotics cell (ANC) is actually "paracetamol and caffeine"—a common remedy for headaches, cold and fever.

ANC had claimed that a team led by PSI Punaji Gawas seized the 1.010 kilos of "brown sugar" from Tej Singh, 26, a farmer from Rajasthan, when he was trying to sell it to a foreigner in Mala on February 10 last year. In the panchnama report, the cops said they had "verified the drug" as brown sugar "by smelling" it.

The value of the seized "drug" was pegged at anything between Rs 20 lakh and a crore subject to its purity. Meanwhile, Singh, who was booked under the Narcotic Drug and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, had to spend exactly a year in jail as an undertrial. Confirming this, DIG Ravindra Yadav said, "We asked the ANC to request the court to get him released." Singh was released on February 9. Incidentally, the same ANC team on December 14, 2008, had arrested a police constable from Calangute with 750 grams of "heroin". However, the chemical analysis report received in November 2009 revealed that the alleged drug was actually "urea".

After this ANC filed an application in court to discharge the police constable and he was released in December 2009. Since then, Kalidas Shetye, the constable who allegedly procured the "drugs" from an army hawaldar named Vasu Gaonkar and was later dismissed from service, has been trying to rejoin the police force. "The samples have been sent to the forensic laboratory in Chennai for retesting. We can arrive at a decision only after the report is received", said an official.