Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Ahmed Muthasim Adnan has stated that police officers can be summoned to determine the chain of custody in drug offense cases.
Chief Justice Muthasim Adnan issued a Practice Direction stating, in cases in which there is no chain of custody form or the form cannot be verified, any official involved in the chain of custody can be summoned to court to determine if the drugs were confiscated from the defendant or from a location registered under the defendant’s name. In such cases, the chain of custody can be verified if the witness testimonies confirm the drugs were in the possession of the defendant or in a location under the defendant’s name.
The chain of custody refers to the order in which items of evidence have been handled during an investigation. There had been numerous cases in which suspects were released due to the authorities not maintaining a record of the chain of custody or having an incomplete chain of custody of the evidence.
One of the most prominent such cases was in 2016, in which a suspect who was caught smuggling in 2.6kg of drugs from Sri Lanka was released due to an issue in the chain of custody. Another suspect was released due to a chain of custody issue after being caught smuggling half a kilogram of drugs from India.