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After 19 months in jail, British couple acquitted on drug charge

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panaji

After enduring jail for 19 months as undertrials the young British couple arrested on the charge of illegally possessing drugs during their stay in Goa have finally been acquitted by the high court.

The court authorities said they would be released immediately after the operative part of the judgement is officially handed over to the jail authorities.

The case shot into the limelight due to the intervention of the British Consulate. Twenty nine year old Alexia Stewart, one of the accused, is the daughter of Philip Stewart, the director of studies in human sciences at St Anne's College, Oxford.

Eyebrows were raised, however, when Pratapsinh Rane, former chief minister of Goa, said in the state assembly in July last year that it was a frame-up and that the cops had planted drugs on them.

Even the then police chief had admitted that the case was not very strong and lacked enough evidence. But the special court handling narcotic cases had convicted the couple for 10 years imprisonment in December last year.

Since then, the couple has been languishing at Aguada central jail, situated on the hillock of the famous Candolim-Calangute-Baga beachline. Stewart had appealed in the high court against the lower court's order.

Keith Gary Carter and Alexia Stewart, who pretended to be Larry and Lucy Sky initially, were arrested in a rented house near the Vagator beach on 21 March last year by the anti-narcotic cell of the state police. One hundred and sixty five grams of charas wrapped in a polythene bag was recovered from them.

Philip Stewart had, however, alleged that they have been falsely implicated in a frame-up because they refused to pay a bribe of 2000 British pounds to the ANC team who allegedly threatened to file a case if the money was not paid.

Many such instances have come to light in the past and one police sub-inspector has even been suspended on the charge of falsely implicating foreign tourists in such cases.

In its order issued on 26 October, the high court acquitted the couple on the grounds that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges and that the investigating officers had been totally negligent in the investigation. The frame-up issue has not been touched upon.

"We still say that it was a genuine case and not a frame-up," insists R S Sahay, the director general of police, asking why then the lower court had convicted them. He said he would decide upon appealing only after examining the court judgement thoroughly.

According to the records, 30 per cent of the convicts at the Aguada central jail are facing a 10-year imprisonment for their involvement in narcotic cases. Interestingly, most of them are drug addicts and not drug peddlers.

Though no decision has been taken to date on how to deal with such cases, the feeling here is that there should not be any discrimination on the basis of nationality. Instead there should be discrimination between addicts and peddlers as well as between the ones possessing soft drugs and those found with hard drugs in their custody.

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