ANANDA PASUPATHI PILLAI Vs. SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT PROHIBITION AND EXCISE DEPARTMENT GOVERNMENT OF TAMIL NADU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ONE Mrs. Ananda Pasupathi Pillai (petitioner) is the mother of the detenu Balaeswaran alias Siva.

(2.) (a) On 26.12.1994 at about 11.30 hrs., near Polo Military Ground oft G.S.T.Road, St.Thomas Mount, the Inspector of Police, N.I.B. C.I.D., intercepted the detenu and another by name Elanchezhian and recovered two packets of heroin from each one of them and each of the packets weighed a kilogram, that is to say, all the four packets seized from them weighed four kilograms of heroin. (b) Both of them, it is said, were stated to have been interrogated in turn, were stated to have given confessional statements voluntarily and the statements so given by them were recorded. They appear to have stated in their statements that the said packets of herein were obtained at Indore and transferred to Madras for eventual export to Srilanka. They were arrested and produced before court for remand. (c) Successive bail application, it appeals, had been filed before the Special Judge (NDPS), Madras, and all those bail applications so filed, it is said, had been dismissed and consequently, they were stated; to be anguishing in prison. (d) In one of the joint bail applications filed, that is, in Crl.M.P. No. 1877 of 1994 they appear to have taken a plea that the statements recorded from them were the resultant product of coercion and that they were not in conscious possession of heroin stated to be seized they retracted their earlier confessional statements given before the Inspector of Police, N.I.B. C.I.D., Madras.

(3.) LIKEWISE, the said Elanchezhian was also stated to have been detained and he in turn, challenged his detention by filing H.C.P. No.804 of 1995. A Division Bench of this Court by order dated 19.9.1995 allowed the said habeas corpus petition and quashed the detention order and set him at liberty on the ground that the Detaining Authority was not at all alive to the factum of retraction of the confessional statement in the grounds of detention and therefore the subjective satisfaction derived by such Authority in clamping the order of detention on him was vitiated.