Guinean national, who spent five years in jail after being arrested on charges of attempting to smuggle narcotics, was acquitted by a special court after it found there was insufficient evidence against him.
MUMBAI: Guinean national, who spent five years in jail after being arrested on charges of attempting to smuggle narcotics, was acquitted by a special court after it found there was insufficient evidence against him.
Kamano Antonie, a 37-year-old garment trader and father of two, was arrested on July 26, 2002 by officials of the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) at the international airport on charges of carrying 11.83 kg of heroin in false compartments in his suitcase.
The AIU told the court that Antonie, who was flying to Addis Ababa on an Ethiopian Airlines flight, had been acting in a suspicious manner and the concealed narcotics were found on searching his baggage.
However, defence counsel RB Amroliya and YN Katpitia argued in the NDPS court that the prosecution's arguments were flawed since they claimed that Antonie had been arrested before boarding the flight, while the evidence suggested otherwise.
"The counterfoil of his boarding air ticket was found to be torn, which meant he had boarded the flight and was called off it. The prosecution could not offer a suitable reason as to how the counterfoil was missing," Amroliya said.
The defence argued that Antonie had boarded the flight without his bag since he could not find it and had informed customs officials about this.
When AIU officials found an unclaimed bag with narcotics, they assumed Antonie was its owner and arrested him after forcing him to alight from the plane, the counsel added.
Due to lack of corroborating evidence in the case and with the two panchnama witnesses turning hostile, Special Judge P N Deshmukh acquitted Antonie of all charges on February 26.
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