Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Wednesday quashed the charges against Chalakudy-based beauty parlour owner Sheela Sunny after a chemical examination revealed that the stamps seized from her possession didn’t contain the potent hallucinogenic drug LSD.
Justice Kauser Edappagath gave the verdict while considering a petition filed by Sheela seeking to dismiss the case, stating that what the Excise officials had seized from her possession was not the illegal drug and the same has been found in a scientific examination held at the Regional Analytical Laboratory at Kakkanad.
Earlier, Sheela (51), a resident of Kaliyankara House, Nayarangadi, was forced to undergo 72 days of imprisonment. She was arrested from her beauty parlour on February 27 after an Excise team claimed to have recovered 12 LSD stamps from her bag.
Since the possession of drugs amounts to a serious offence, she didn’t receive bail from the lower courts and had to wait until May 10 when the High Court allotted her bail.
However, things turned upside down when the result of the chemical examination was out on May 12, as the stamps tested negative for LSD. She, though, received a copy of the ‘LSD Test Negative’ report only a week back.
Curiously, the Excise department didn’t inform the victim of the test result, which reveals the “grave lapse” on their part, for nearly two months. All the three tests done on the 12 stamps seized from her possession turned negative for the drug.
The report from the Kakkanad Laboratory was sent to the Chalakudy Excise range officer and the Circle Officer on May 12 itself. Both the offices received the report the next day. However, the Excise didn’t inform the development to Sheela, who had, by that time, already served 72 days of imprisonment and was out on bail.
