The curious case of a Kerala beautician who spent 2.5 months in jail over a fake drug case

A 51-year-old woman in Kerala’s Chalakudy, who ran a beauty parlour, was put in jail for 72 days on an alleged fake drug case where excise officials alleged that synthetic drugs (LSD stamps) were seized from her bag and vehicle. Sheela Sunny is seeking punitive action against those who trapped her in the drug case.

On February 27, excise officials came to her beauty parlour named ‘She Style’ alleging that they had received intelligence inputs indicating that she was selling LSD stamps using her parlour as the cover for such operations.

She asked them to look around and they reportedly went straight for her bag and took out a packet and claimed it was an LSD stamp. Then they asked her for the keys of her scooter. They lifted the seat and took out another packet and claimed they had found 12 LSD stamps. Sunny was then taken to the Excise inspector’s office at Irinjalakuda, 16 km from Chalakudy, which is in Thrissur district.

The Kerala Excise Department declared that the combined worth of the substances seized was Rs 60,000. However, a laboratory test of the seized packets revealed that it was not a synthetic drug.

Excise Inspector Satheesan claimed that officials took action against Sunny based on the information received through an internet call. But the officials don’t know yet who called them. The excise officials have summoned a female relate of Sunny, who is based in Bengaluru, for a detailed interrogation into the case.

She was released from jail on May 10 after the state High Court granted her bail on May 9. She has reportedly said that this arrest devastated her business as she had taken a loan to run her parlour and and she is yet to repay her loan. Moreover, she has been disgraced in front of her family and relatives.

"The excise officials conducted came to raid the shop as if they knew exactly where these drugs were kept. They found them in my bag and vehicle. I repeatedly told them I had no clue what these substances were. My shop has been shut and debtors have started asking for repayment of the loan,” said Sunny to the media.

Sunny suspects that somebody from her family could be responsible for this. The district government advocate Sunilkumar advised the excise department to not proceed with the case after seeing the chemical analysis report was published on June 30.

She now plans to file a case against the officials and her lawyer has said that they plan to file a defamation case. The lawyer was also shocked that thought the test results came on May 12, neither Sunny nor her lawyer were informed of the matter. They obtained the result of the chemical test through a request made by her advocate in court.

The assistant chemical examiner Jyothi P Mallya of the Kakkanad Regional Laboratory submitted the report on May 12 certifying that the seized stamps did not contain LSD. Although the officials realised that it was fake case, it neither informed the victim of the test result nor took steps to rectify the department’s mistake.

In an attempt to justify its stand, the excise department claimed that the inspector who made the arrest had been transferred, but reports have revealed that the decision to move the official out of the station was taken before the result of the laboratory test was received.

The alleged LSD stamps that were sent by the Irinjalakuda excise circle office through the Sessions Court, Thrissur, for the chemical test were received at the laboratory in Kakkanad on April 1, but the arrest was made on February 27.

The excise department claimed that the department's crime branch was investigating the officials’ failure. But the department neither summoned the officer who arrested Sunny nor sought details about the incident.