The dramatic story of Kerala beautician who spent 72 days in jail over fake drug case

Minutes later, Sheela, 51, was taken to the Excise inspector’s office at Irinjalakuda, 16 km from Chalakudy, where she stood head bowed as cameras around her clicked away – she soon made it to television channels and the following day’s newspapers as the “woman who ran a drug business under the guise of a beauty parlour”.

Excise officials filed a case against Sheela, slapping stringent sections of the NDPS Act. Since the LSD stamps weighed 0.160 gram – considered ‘commercial quantity’ – she was liable to be sentenced to no less than 10 years of imprisonment.
Sheela’s world collapsed around her.

Last week, however, the 51-year-old stood vindicated – chemical tests on what was seized from her bag and scooter tested negative for LSD.

On July 2, Excise Minister M B Rajesh said he had called Sheela and expressed his regret over the case and the hardships that she had to endure. “We will inform the court that Sheela is innocent. There will be action in this matter,’’ he said, adding that the Inspector who led the raid and arrested Sheela has been placed under suspension.

The clean chit marks a dramatic turnaround for Sheela, but the taint and the stigma of the last few months had taken a heavy toll.

Recalling the arrest, Sheela said, “I was shocked when they said I was carrying drugs with me. That was the first time I had ever heard or seen an LSD stamp. I pleaded before the officials, said I was innocent. But they said I was selling drugs to college students who come to my parlour,’’ she said.

At the excise office, she says, more allegations came her way. “The officials claimed that I was a drug peddler, but they never asked me or probed how the drug reached me,’’ she says.

Sheela was produced before a local magistrate court, which remanded her in judicial custody for 14 days. She was taken to Viyyur central prison in Thrissur, where she shared a cramped cell with about two dozen women. “There were women accused of cases of drugs, cheating and theft. For two days, I did not eat anything, but wept.
Two days later, my husband, son and son-in-law came to visit me in jail,’’ she says.

While the family approached the court for bail, they also filed complaints with the Chief Minister and the police chief, alleging that the case was false.

But around them, their world began crumbling.

When she was arrested in February, Sheela had almost completed the process for obtaining a work visa – she had an opportunity to work in Italy as a domestic help. The dates for the final interview came and went while she was in jail..

Soon, friends and relatives started staying away and WhatsApp groups, where forwarded news of Sheela’s arrest kept doing the rounds, got unbearable for her immediate family.

Her son, who ran a mobile phone shop at Chalakudy, had to battle the stigma of his mother’s arrest. “My husband worked at a hotel in Thrissur. Luckily for us, no one identified him as my husband. All along, I could come up with no reason why I was in this situation. While I was in jail, a few nuns came to visit the prisoners, but I didn’t even go to them because I had lost faith in God.’’

Over a month after her arrest, the owner of the premises from where she ran the beauty parlour sent them a notice to vacate. “I started the parlour five years ago after taking a bank loan. We were just beginning to recover from the losses of the pandemic years. But there was no option but to vacate the building. Later, my son and husband sold everything in the parlour at throwaway rates to mobilise money for my bail,’’ she said.

Finally, after over two months in jail, came a glimmer of hope.
On May 9, the High Court, dismissing the prosecution’s objections, granted bail to Sheela, observing that she had already spent 72 days in judicial custody when “bail is the rule and jail the exception’’.

On June 30, came the big news: a chemical examination at a Kochi-based lab of the alleged contraband seized from Sheela had tested negative for lysergic acid diethylamide, the active ingredient in LSD stamps. The lab had conducted four tests – colour test for LSD, UV visualisation, thin-layer chromotography and spectro photometric analysis — to ascertain the presence of LSD, but all tests had returned negative for the drug.

The Excise Crime Branch is now probing the case based on Sheela’s complaint to the Chief Minister.

Excise sources said they acted on inputs from a source. “Since drug cases are on the rise, we have to act on tip-offs. We don’t have kits to test LSD stamps at the time of seizure and ascertain the content of the chemical substance,’’ said an Excise source.

Relieved to be finally out, Sheela says she is determined to move court and seek compensation for the ordeal she underwent. “Nobody deserves to go through what I did. I lost everything, including my livelihood,” says Sheela.