NEW DELHI: A conviction rate of over 90% in cases of drug possession in Punjab may well be based on a copy-paste job by police in its chargesheets and their bland acceptance by special courts set up under the NDPS Act .

An in-depth study by a Delhi-based think-tank (to be released this week) on Punjab's failure to curb rampant drug abuse has revealed the police used a "common narrative" in its chargesheets and had a set of 10-12 phrases to describe investigations in 11,000 of the 13,000 chargesheets filed under the Act.

The study covering 2013-2015 reflects a shocking state of affairs that may well be the norm in the capital and other states since it is the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of 1985 itself which encourages police to just prove possession of a drug by a suspect instead of demanding a higher level of proof in the form of witness testimony and mens rea (intent/state of mind).

Researchers at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy studied these chargesheets to examine how the criminal justice system deals with the drug problem in Punjab. They discovered that the story of the prosecution remains more or less the same, replete with terms such as "on the basis of suspicion" and "intoxicant substance/drug recovered in a 'polythene envelope'" to "said suspect was found carrying a plastic bag."

The yet-to-be-released study, 'From Addict to Convict', shared with TOI , traced the "duplication of narratives" where out of 13,350 NDPS cases across Punjab, police narratives use a combination of 10 phrases in 10,959 cases. "To elaborate, 3,789 cases describe the investigation in more or less an identical manner - wherein the police party was on patrol duty and came across a suspicious looking person. The suspect, on seeing the police party, tries to run away and thereafter reposes confidence to be searched by the investigating officer (sic)," the report, authored by Neha Singhal, Arpita Mitra and Kaushiki Sanyal, says.

While the NDPS Act was brought as a deterrent against trafficking, the report says it has not lowered crime rates for drug offences or trafficking in Punjab, instead throwing a large number of addicts into jail .

