Basti (UP), May 22 (IANS): Justice, in this case, was delayed for so long that it almost seems like it has been denied.

Abdullah Ayub spent 20 years in jail for a crime he did not commit.

He paid the price of evicting a police constable Khurshid who lived on rent in his house but did not pay the rent.

The incident took place in March 2003 and soon after he threw out Khurshid from his house, Abdullah Ayub was 'caught' with 25 grams of heroin worth Rs 1 crore from his possession.

For days, weeks, months and years, Abdullah pleaded that he did not possess heroin but the evidence was tampered with and he remained behind the bars.

Ayub's lawyer Prem Prakash Srivastava told reporters that cops from Purani Basti police station falsely arrested his client by presenting heroin as evidence.

This happened after Ayub had evicted Khurshid from his house.

Khurshid, apparently, hatched a conspiracy with CO City Anil Singh, SO Purani Basti Lalji Yadav and SI Narmadeshwar Shukla to trap his former landlord.

These police officers not only planted the fake heroin on Ayub, but also tampered with forensic evidence to further implicate him.

"Now, 20 years later, Ayyub has walked out of jail, vindicated, after it was proved in court that the narcotic was actually plain old powder sold in shops for Rs 20," said the lawyer.

According to Srivastava, when the trial began, the forensic laboratory in Basti confirmed the presence of heroin in the powder.

However, when the court sent this heroin sample to the laboratory in Lucknow, it was discovered that it was not heroin at all. The sample was then sent to the laboratory in Delhi, where the police tampered with the evidence.

Later, when the court summoned expert scientists from Lucknow, they confirmed that the sample was indeed fake and had a brown colour, whereas heroin never changes its colour in any climate and remains white.

Thereafter, Justice Vijay Kumar Katiyar acquitted the wrongfully accused victim. The judge also stated that the police had misrepresented the whole matter and the prosecution had wasted the time of the court.

However, no action has yet been announced against those police personnel who did the entire frame-up.