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2015 (5) TMI 1135 - SC - Indian LawsOffence punishable u/s 15 the NDPS Act - sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of 10 years and to pay a fine of ₹ 1 lakh each and, in default of payment of fine, to suffer rigorous imprisonment for a further period of one year - Held that:- At any rate, the court cannot start with the presumption that the police records are untrustworthy. As a proposition of law the presumption should be the other way around. That official acts of the police have been regularly performed is a wise principle of presumption and recognised even by the legislature. Hence when a police officer gives evidence in court that a certain article was recovered by him on the strength of the statement made by the accused it is open to the court to believe the version to be correct if it is not otherwise shown to be unreliable. It is for the accused, through cross-examination of witnesses or through any other materials, to show that the evidence of the police officer is either unreliable or at least unsafe to be acted upon in a particular case. If the court has any good reason to suspect the truthfulness of such records of the police the court could certainly take into account the fact that no other independent person was present at the time of recovery. But it is not a legally approvable procedure to presume the police action as unreliable to start with, nor to jettison such action merely for the reason that police did not collect signatures of independent persons in the documents made contemporaneous with such actions. In the case at hand, the evidence is unimpeachable and beyond reproach and the witnesses cited by the prosecution can be believed and their evidence has been correctly relied upon by the trial court and the High Court to record a conviction. It is well settled in law that what is necessary for proving the prosecution case is not the quantity but the quality of the evidence.
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