The acquittal of two men in the Mohali NDPS case has raised a more serious question than whether the prosecution failed to prove a drug charge: how can a police narrative survive when CCTV footage places an accused in custody before the arrest described in the case record? The special NDPS court’s November 6 verdict found that the Punjab Special Task Force had presented a “dramatic and fictitious story” about a checkpoint arrest and recovery of 4,620 Lomotil tablets.
The case is significant because the prosecution’s version was not merely weakened by a conflicting witness account. It was challenged by a time-stamped visual record that was subsequently examined by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh. The CFSL found the footage genuine, with no cuts, editing or tampering, and confirmed that its continuity was intact. The evidence turned a routine narcotics prosecution into a test of how police accounts are scrutinised when independent records tell a different story.
The court acquitted Ranjit Singh alias Rania and Sunny Bhalecha. According to the STF’s prosecution story, the two men were intercepted at a checkpoint near a sweets shop in Sector 89 at 5.20 pm on February 12, 2024. They were allegedly riding a Splendor motorcycle, bearing registration number PB-65-AM-1528, and an envelope hanging from the motorcycle’s handlebar allegedly contained 4,620 narcotic tablets identified as Lomotil.
The defence case was that Sunny had not been arrested at the checkpoint. His sister, Sili Bhalecha, approached the Punjab and Haryana high court with CCTV footage from outside his shop, alleging that police personnel had picked him up from the shop and later constructed the checkpoint arrest and recovery narrative. The footage showed Sunny being taken from the parking area outside his shop at about 4.20 pm, roughly an hour before the time recorded in the STF’s account.
That time difference became central to the court’s assessment. If Sunny was already in police custody at 4.20 pm, the prosecution’s claim that he was arrested at the Sector 89 checkpoint at 5.20 pm could not be accepted without a satisfactory explanation. The court found that the later showing of his arrest at the checkpoint seriously undermined the prosecution’s case.
The evidence also created questions about the alleged recovery. Sunny was seen walking when police personnel took him away. The motorcycle and the envelope that allegedly contained the tablets were not visible in the CCTV footage. Another man wearing a blue denim jacket was also shown being taken away in a police vehicle. His physical appearance did not match that of Ranjit Singh, the co-accused named in the case.
This was not a minor inconsistency in a complex prosecution narrative. The footage challenged the sequence of arrest, the location of the alleged incident, the identity of people taken away by the police and the circumstances in which the narcotic tablets were said to have been recovered. The prosecution could not satisfactorily explain who the man in the blue denim jacket was or how Ranjit Singh had been implicated.
The court’s observations also point to the importance of independent evidence in policing systems where the investigating agency often controls the first account of an arrest. In this case, the defence did not rely only on competing testimony. It produced a record generated outside the police case file. The high court then directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to have the pen drive examined by the CFSL on October 29, 2025. The forensic scientist later confirmed the footage’s authenticity in court.
That institutional sequence matters. CCTV footage became useful not simply because it existed, but because it was preserved, presented, independently examined and tested during the trial. The forensic finding addressed a possible challenge to the material itself by establishing that the footage had not been cut, edited or tampered with. Without that chain of scrutiny, the evidentiary dispute could have remained a contest between the police version and the defence version.
The conduct of the prosecution witnesses added another layer to the court’s concerns. STF personnel, including ASI Harvinder Singh, ASI Karamjit Mohan and inspector Hakam Singh, appeared as prosecution witnesses. When the defence played the CCTV footage before the court, they refused to identify the policemen visible in it or the location where the incident took place. The refusal did not resolve the contradiction; instead, it left the prosecution unable to connect its official account with the visual evidence placed before the court.
The case also illustrates how an arrest record can become the foundation for subsequent criminal proceedings. After Sunny’s medical examination on February 13, 2024, his dope test reportedly returned positive, and Section 27 of the NDPS Act was added to the case. But once the court found that the basic account of when and where he was arrested was unreliable, the later steps in the prosecution were examined against that weakened foundation.
The broader issue is not whether every police account should be presumed false. It is whether police accounts involving arrest, seizure and custody are subjected to sufficiently independent checks before they determine a person’s legal position. The Mohali case shows the vulnerability created when the same agency reports the arrest, describes the recovery, identifies the accused and produces the witnesses supporting that version. An external record can expose contradictions, but only if the system allows that record to be preserved and investigated.
For cities and their residents, this is also a question of institutional trust. Urban policing operates through checkpoints, street surveillance, shopfront cameras, medical examinations, case diaries and courts. These systems generate records at different stages. When those records agree, they can strengthen a prosecution. When they conflict, the conflict is not administrative detail: it can determine whether a person remains in custody, whether a serious criminal charge proceeds and whether public institutions are believed.
The court’s description of the STF version as a “dramatic and fictitious story” signals the seriousness with which it viewed the discrepancies. The finding was tied to specific evidence: the time shown in CCTV footage, the CFSL’s confirmation of authenticity, the absence of the motorcycle and envelope in the footage, the unidentified man taken away in the police vehicle and the prosecution’s inability to explain the mismatch involving Ranjit Singh.
What the supplied record establishes is the failure of this prosecution to withstand independent scrutiny. It does not by itself establish how widespread similar conduct may be, nor does it provide details of any separate departmental or criminal action against the officers involved. Those questions remain distinct from the acquittal and would require separate official findings.
The next institutional developments to monitor are therefore not only the legal outcome for the two acquitted men, but also whether the concerns recorded by the court lead to any documented action concerning the police personnel and the handling of the alleged arrest and recovery. The case has already demonstrated the value of preserved CCTV and forensic examination. Its lasting significance will depend on whether those safeguards become routine protections rather than exceptional tools available only after a family approaches a higher court.
