Mere Registered Ownership of a Vehicle Is Not Enough for a Section 25 NDPS Charge: Rajasthan High Court

On 31.01.2022 the Malakhera police in Alwar stopped a motorcycle and recovered 300 grams of ganja from one rider and 200 grams from the other, hidden in their clothes (para 2). The charge-sheet also named the petitioner, only because the motorcycle was registered in his name (para 3). The trial court framed a charge against him under Section 8/25 of the NDPS Act on 21.09.2024, and the Sessions Judge, Alwar, dismissed his revision on 30.01.2025 (paras 1, 3). He challenged both orders under Section 528 BNSS. The State argued that as registered owner he was responsible, and that the petition was in substance a second revision (para 5).

Section 25 reaches an owner only if he "knowingly permits" the conveyance to be used for an offence; ownership alone does not make him chargeable (paras 7-8). Knowledge or conscious permission is the sine qua non, and the prosecution must show it at least prima facie; it cannot be presumed from ownership (para 9). Relying on Balwinder Singh v. Asstt. Commissioner, Customs and Central Excise, where a registered owner who had sold his lorry was acquitted, and on Harbhajan Singh v. State of Haryana, the Court held that the police cannot rope in an owner on the strength of Section 35; the presumption "cannot be pressed into service or operated in vacuum" until the prosecution discharges its initial burden (paras 10-11, 14). The NDPS Act deserves strict enforcement, but not at the cost of mens rea (paras 12-13). Here the only material was the registration. A witness, Naveen, stated that the motorcycle was sold through him to a co-accused on 02.12.2019, nearly two years before the seizure, and the trial court had released it on supurdagi to that co-accused, who claimed to own it under an agreement to sell (para 15). Registration alone did not show knowing permission (para 16).