On Tuesday, February 11, the Ernakulam Additional Sessions court acquitted Malayalam actor Shine Tom Chacko and six others in a decade-old cocaine case that shook Kerala, being the first cocaine drug case reported in the state. The others accused in the case were Reshma Rangaswamy, Blessy Silverster, Tincy Babu, Sneha Babu, Okowe Chigozie Collins, Prithviraj, and Jasbir Singh.
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All were acquitted, except for the seventh accused, as he failed to appear before court today. According to Manorama News, the case was dismissed, and the accused was set free due to lack of evidence. The blood samples collected by the police from the defendants showed no trace of cocaine in their system.
What happened in 2015?
On January 30, 2015, the police were tipped off about a possible “smoke party” happening in a flat in Kochi’s Kadavanthra. When police raided the apartment at 12:15 am, they seized seven grams of cocaine on the premises. A case was charged against all who were present, including the actor, under the Narcotic Drugs And Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act 1985. Chacko, who denied using the drug, claimed he was merely at the apartment to discuss a potential film.
CCTV footage obtained from the Ernakulam South Railway Station showed two of the accused picking up Nigerian drug dealer Okowe Chigozie Collins, who transported the drugs from Goa to Kochi. Shine and the four women accused spent two months in jail before securing bail from the Kerala High Court in March 2015. The trial commenced in the Additional Sessions Court in October 2018.
