Calcutta High Court on Friday fined the Narcotics Control Bureau, Calcutta, Rs 1 lakh for implicating a young man who has been in jail for nine years.

The court also directed the Alipore jail authorities to release 29-year-old Mohammad Salim Akhtar immediately.

The bureau arrested Akhtar, a resident of Madan Mohan Burman Street, on September 19, 1999, for allegedly trying to sell brown sugar. On June 22, 2005, the city civil and sessions court convicted Akhtar and sentenced him to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment.

The high court division bench, comprising Justice D.P. Sengupta and Justice P.K. Deb, held that the trial court judgment was bad in law because the bureau could not substantiate its charges under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Act, 1985.

Akhtar’s counsel Kamal Bhattacharya said his client was with Debasish Datta in a Bowbazar restaurant when bureau inspectors raided it.

“About 570 grams of brown sugar and foreign currencies of eight countries were found on Datta. But the inspectors arrested both and slapped cases under sections 29 (carrying of narcotic drugs) and 21 (abetting people in consuming drugs) of the act on my client,” said the lawyer.