Police charged a Visakhapatnam shopkeeper with 'poisoning' for storing e-cigarettes; High Court quashes the case
In March 2024 Visakhapatnam's City Task Force raided shops selling e-cigarettes and charged a shopkeeper not only under the e-cigarette ban but under penal-code sections for negligence with poison and for causing hurt by poison. On 9 March 2026 the High Court quashed the whole prosecution: e-cigarettes are not 'poison', and the storage offence is non-cognizable, so police could not file a charge sheet for it.
This page records what the cited court records say happened. Findings belong to the court or authority that made them; this register adds none of its own. Names of private individuals are withheld unless a naming gate clears them.
How we verify →Prosecution quashed by the High Court on 9 March 2026.
What happened
The Hindu reported on 24 March 2024 that Visakhapatnam's City Task Force raided two shops, arrested two people for selling banned e-cigarettes, and seized several hundred of them.
III Town police registered FIR No. 57 of 2024 under section 5 read with section 8 of the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act, 2019, which bans storing e-cigarettes, and under sections 284 and 328 of the Indian Penal Code, which punish negligent conduct with poisonous substances and causing hurt by poison. A charge sheet followed, and the case was numbered C.C. No. 2896 of 2025.
Justice Y. Lakshmana Rao held that e-cigarettes are not a 'poisonous substance' under section 284, and that the facts alleged did not amount to administering poison under section 328. He further held that the storage offence under the e-cigarette law is non-cognizable, so it had to be pursued by a written complaint from an authorised officer, not a police charge sheet. The proceedings were quashed.
What the High Court held
“Electronic cigarettes, which form the subject matter of the present prosecution, do not, by any legally tenable construction or judicial interpretation, answer the description of a 'poisonous substance' within the contemplation of Section 284 of 'the I.P.C.,' nor do the facts alleged constitute the administration of poison or stupefying substances as envisaged under Section 328 of 'the I.P.C.'”
Crl.P. No. 12896 of 2025, judgment dated 9 March 2026, para 6 — read the full text
Storing a product, charged as poisoning
Adults who buy e-cigarettes choose to. The shopkeeper was prosecuted for keeping them in stock, and police added poisoning charges that the High Court found had no legal basis.
What we could not confirm
The judgment gives the FIR number but not the date of the raid; the date is taken from The Hindu's report, which gives the number seized as both 734 and 743. The Hindu report mentions two shops; the judgment concerns one accused.