A young man was acquitted of possessing illegal psychotropic drugs on Thursday after it turned out that a sachet which he threw away from a car contained paracetamol and not an illegal substance.

Nathan Agius, 24 of Qormi, had been a passenger on the back seat of a Mercedes in June 2014 when a police patrol spotted him throwing away a small sachet of white powder, which they suspected of being an illegal drug.

He was arrested and made a statement to the police before being arraigned and accused of possession of mephedrone and ecstasy, both illegal psychotropic drugs.

During the proceedings his defence lawyers challenged the probatory value of the accused’s statement to the police since he was not assisted by a lawyer.

Magistrate Natasha Galea Sciberras, on the basis of local and EU jurisprudence, declared the accused’s statement inadmissible as evidence against him.

Once this statement was discarded, all that was left was the testimony of a police constable who had seen the accused throw away the sachet.

But a court-appointed scientific expert reported that the powder inside that sachet contained paracetamol, a licit drug, leading the court to pronounce an acquittal.

Lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia were defence counsel.