Complainant Can Investigate: Supreme Court Upholds NDPS Conviction, Rejects Story of Vanishing Stranger With the Bag

On 09.01.2002 a police team checking traffic stopped a motorcycle without a number plate, ridden by Gulshan Rana with Rajesh Dhiman on the pillion carrying a backpack. No local resident agreed to witness the search; the appellants agreed to be searched on the spot, and 3 kg 100 g of charas was found in the backpack (para 3). The only independent witness turned hostile, and the appellants said the bag belonged to a stranger who had taken a lift and fled (para 4). The Special Judge acquitted them on 28.12.2002; the High Court on 28.08.2012 convicted them under Section 20 and imposed ten years' rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1,00,000 each (paras 2, 5-6).

The Constitution Bench in Mukesh Singh had overruled Mohan Lal: an informant who investigates does not by that alone vitiate the investigation, and actual bias or a real likelihood of it must be shown (para 10). No enmity or motive was alleged, mere deficiencies in investigation cannot alone prove bias, and so large a quantity could not have been planted (para 11). The passages of Mukesh Singh the appellants relied on recorded a party's contention, not the Court's finding (para 13). Following K. Gopal Reddy, only a reasonably probable alternative view creates reasonable doubt; fanciful possibilities are left out (paras 14-15). The stranger who appeared and vanished was ex-facie fanciful, unsupported by any evidence, and the version placed the appellants at the spot (para 16). The hostile witness's account of a third person was hearsay, and at most showed that nothing was recovered in front of him (para 17). Non-examination of independent witnesses is not ipso facto fatal (para 18). The trial court had misapplied the law on the burden of proof, so the High Court could reverse the acquittal (paras 19-20), and Section 50 did not apply to a backpack (para 21).