JUDGMENT

P. Kumararatnam, J.

The above-named Accused-Appellant (hereinafter referred to as the Appellant) was indicted by the Attorney General in the High Court of Colombo under Sections 54(A) (b) and 54(A) (d) of the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance as amended by Act No. 13 of 1984 for Trafficking and Possession of 4.07 grams of Heroin (Diacetylmorphine) on 06^th March 2010.

After trial, the Appellant was found guilty on the second count and the Learned High Court Judge of Colombo had imposed life imprisonment on 04/04/2024.

Being aggrieved by the aforesaid conviction and sentence, the Appellant preferred this appeal to this court.

The Learned Counsel for the Appellant informed this court that the Appellant had given his consent to argue this matter in his absence. At the hearing, the Appellant was connected via the Zoom platform from prison.

In this case, the raid was conducted following specific information received by PW1 IP/Hettiarachchi on 06.03.2010. The raid was headed by him with 10 police officers including a woman police constable from the Wattala Police Station. All have been named as witnesses in the indictment including the Government Analyst. The prosecution had called PW1, PW2, PW4, PW6, PW7 (Government Analyst), PW8 and PW9 and closed their case. The prosecution marked the productions P1-P2.

When the defence was called, the Appellant had made a statement from the Dock and closed the case.

Background of the case.

PW1 received information that the drugs had been trafficked in three- wheelers which operated from Negombo to Colombo. They set up a surprise checkpoint near the Gemunu Palace Theatre, on the Colombo-Negombo main road. While checking the vehicles randomly, PW2 had stopped a three- wheeler bearing the Number QC 8309 at the checkpoint. PW1 had observed that two people were in the three-wheeler. The Appellant was seated in the rear seat. As the Appellant was in a tense mood, the officer had body checked the Appellant and found a small parcel concealed in his underwear. Upon further examination, the parcel had contained some substance. As the substance tested positive for Heroin, the Appellant was arrested immediately.

The driver of the three-wheeler was also arrested as he possessed Rs.123,100/- in cash. The substance was weighed at the Wattala Gold House. The weight of the substance was recorded as 24.500 grams.

PW2, Sgt/21365 Surasinghe had corroborated the evidence of PW1, and other police witnesses called by the prosecution had established the movement of the production to the Government Analyst Department.

According to the Government Analyst Report, the weight of the brown coloured powder was 24.88 grams, which contained 4.07 grams of pure Heroin (Diacetylmorphine) within the Heroin.

The main ground urged by the Counsel for the Appellant is that the Learned Trial Judge erred in law when concluding that the prosecution proved the chain of custody beyond reasonable doubt.

“Reasonable doubt” refers to the legal principle which establishes that insufficient evidence would prevent the conviction of a defendant of a crime. The prosecution bears the weight of proving to the judge the defendant’s guilt in respect of the crime with which he has been charged, in order to prove why the defendant should be convicted. Accordingly, in this context, the phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt" indicates that the evidence and arguments brought forward by the prosecution to establish the defendant’s guilt must be done so clearly, in a manner that it is accepted as fact by any rational person.

In Woolmington v DPP (1935) the Court ruled that in criminal cases, the burden of proof is always on the prosecution to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and it is not the defendant’s burden to prove his innocence.

In the case of Mohamed Nimnaz V. Attorney General CA/95/94 it was held:

“A criminal case has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Although we take seri