Judgment Intelligence
Petition Dismissed- Court
- Supreme Court of India
- Date of Decision
- 25 January 2022
- Bench
- Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M.M. Sundresh
- Relevant Acts & Sections
- Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 — Sections 20(b)(ii)(c), 50
The appeal was dismissed, the parties bearing their own costs (para 6); the Record of Proceedings of the same day records the dismissal in terms of the signed reportable order.
Key holdings
- Where contraband is recovered from a bag carried by the accused and not from his person, the Parmanand line on Section 50 does not apply (paras 4-5).
- The Court declined to hold that a personal search vitiated by violation of Section 50 also vitiates a recovery made otherwise (para 5).
- An accused who had served the ten-year sentence was released earlier on substitution of the default sentence, while the Section 50 question was heard (para 2).
Case explainer by NyayVidhan: an account of this judgment and the law it laid down, not the court's text. The judgment itself is the authoritative version.
Brief Facts
Court's Findings
Legal Principle
Precedents Relied Upon
- State of Rajasthan v. Parmanand & Anr. (2014) 5 SCC 345
Relied on by the appellant (its para 19) to argue that offering a third option of search by the officer, outside Section 50(1), vitiates the recovery; held inapplicable because the recovery was from a bag carried on a kanwad and not from the person.
- State of Punjab v. Baldev Singh 1999 (6) SCC 172
Constitution Bench decision relied on in Parmanand: a search on prior information without informing the person of the right to be searched before a Gazetted Officer or Magistrate renders the recovery suspicious and vitiates a conviction resting only on possession of articles recovered from the person.
