Punjab & Haryana HC Shocked At Failure Of Cops To Depose In NDPS Case Despite Repeated Warrants, Grants Bail To Accused

A single bench of Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri remarked,

"It is actually very surprising that the police officials were summoned by way of bailable, non-bailable and by way of arrest warrants … it is rather shocking that the charges in the present case were framed on 18.02.2022, which is almost ten months ago … once the criminal law is set into motion by the police itself, it is a duty of the police officials especially in the NDPS matters to depose before the Court, but on large number of times they did not depose despite repeated warrants."

The Court thus granted bail to the accused, stating that the conduct of the Police led it to draw adverse inference against the prosecution.

The Petitioner-accused was allegedly caught with 1060 tablets of Tramadol. He was booked for offences under Sections 22 and 25 of the NDPS Act and had sought regular bail under Section 439 CrPC. He submitted that he had been in custody for almost 1.5 years and even though charges were framed in February 2021, not a single prosecution witness had been examined. The petitioner contended that rigours of Section 37 of the NDPS Act, which places a bar on bail in cases of commercial quantities was not applicable since he was not a habitual offender and was not involved in any other case.

The Court reiterated that right to speedy trial is a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution. It observed:

"The delay in prosecution has been caused at the hands of the prosecution witnesses and the consequence of the same was that the petitioner had to face incarceration for about 1.5 years. The conduct of the prosecution and the police party who had set the criminal law into motion would lead this Court to draw adverse inference against the prosecution … this Court has prima facie reasons to believe at this stage that the petitioner is not guilty of the offence."

Based on this inference, the Court concluded that in its belief, the petitioner was not guilty of the aforesaid offence at that stage – satisfying the first condition of Section 37 of the NDPS Act. Regarding the second condition, the Court observed that it was not the case of the State nor had it been so argued by the State that the petitioner may repeat the offence or abscond from justice or influence any witness, were he released on bail.

The Court, therefore, allowed the petition and also ordered that a copy of the order be placed before the DGP, Punjab, in view of the repeated issuance of warrants against the police officials.

Case Title: Sukhwinder Singh v. State of Punjab

Citation: CRM-47812 of 2022 in/and CRM-M-48421 of 2021 (O&M)

Coram: Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri

Citation: 2022 LiveLaw (PH) 332  

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