British couple acquitted, police deny frame-up

Sandesh Prabhudesai
27 October 1999 

After facing a jail term for almost 19 months as the suspect, undertrial and even as a convict, the young British couple arrested on the charge of illegally possessing drugs during their stay in Goa has 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 had gained significance due to the intervention of the British Consulate. Alexia Stewart, one of the 29-year old convict, is the daughter of Philip Stewart, the director of studies in human sciences at St Anne's College, Oxford.

Eyebrows were raised however when Pratapsing Rane, former chief minister of Goa, stated in the state Assembly in July last year that it was a frame-up and the state police planted drugs on them.

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

Since then, the young couple has been languishing at Aguada Central jail, situated on the hillock of the famous Candolim-Calangute-Baga beachline, while Stewart had gone into appeal in the high court against the lower court 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. They also recovered 165 grams of charas wrapped in a polythene bag.

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

Many such cases have come to light in the past and one police sub-inspector has even been suspended on the charge of falsely implicating foreign tourists into such cases, if he did not succeed in extracting foreign currency from them.

In its order issued on 26 October, the high court however acquitted the couple on the grounds that the prosecution had failed to prove charges and that the investigating officers had totally been negligent in 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 otherwise the lower court had convicted them. He would decide upon appeal only after examining the court judgement thoroughly.

It goes little contradictory to the statement of Rane, the former chief minister, who had even spoken about deporting all the foreign national convicts, who are facing jail term on the charge of possessing drugs.

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

Though no decision has been taken till date on how to deal with such cases, the feeling here is that the discrimination should be made not on the basis of nationality but between the addicts and peddlers as well as between the ones possessing soft drugs and hard drugs.

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