Half-Sentence Rule Is No Bar: NDPS Convicts Can Get Bail Pending Appeal, Says Supreme Court

The respondent was convicted under the NDPS Act and sentenced to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment (para 3). In his 2021 appeal, the High Court suspended the sentence and granted bail, noting that he had served about 4½ years and that the appeal was unlikely to be heard before he completed the sentence (para 3). The NCB argued that under Supreme Court Legal Aid Committee v. Union of India a convict is not entitled to bail pending appeal until he has served half the sentence (para 4), and that Section 37 of the NDPS Act binds the appellate court, relying on Dadu v. State of Maharashtra (para 7).

The Court explained that Legal Aid Committee, quoted in para 5, dealt with an extraordinary situation of long incarceration of undertrials and issued one-time directions to release them after set periods, expressly leaving the Special Court's power under Section 37 untouched (para 5). That judgment does not curtail the courts' power to grant regular bail or suspend a sentence where a case is made out on merits, even if less than half the sentence has been served; there can be no rule of thumb that half the substantive sentence must be undergone first (para 5). With fixed-term sentences, a rigid approach would make many accused serve the whole sentence before their appeal is heard, violating Article 21 and defeating the right of appeal (para 6). Accepting that Section 37 binds an appellate court considering bail pending appeal, as held in Dadu, the Court held that where an accused has served a substantial part of the sentence and the appeal is not likely to be heard before he serves all of it, bail may be granted; refusing it only on Section 37 grounds would violate Article 21 (para 7).