Only One of Five Bags Sampled: Rajasthan High Court Treats 19.80 kg as Contraband, Grants NDPS Bail

The petitioner was arrested in an FIR registered at Police Station Harnavda Shahji, Baran district, under Sections 8, 15 and 25 of the NDPS Act; his first bail application was dismissed as withdrawn on 8 May 2026 (paras 1, 3). The doda chura allegedly recovered from him on 31 May 2025 was packed in five bags, A to E, weighing 79.400 kg in all (paras 4, 9). His counsel said that only the sampled bag 'C', weighing 19.80 kg, could be treated as contraband, so Section 37 did not apply (paras 5-6). The Public Prosecutor replied that the other bags seemed to hold the same material and that the total exceeded commercial quantity (para 8).

Under the inventory report and certificate of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate No. 2, Chhabra, Baran dated 6 June 2025, only two samples, F and G, were taken, both from bag 'C'; none was taken from bags A, B, D and E (para 10). In those circumstances, the material in bag 'C' alone 'can only be treated to be alleged contraband', and at 19.80 kg it is less than commercial quantity (para 10). The Court applied its order of 20 April 2026 in Hariram v. State of Rajasthan, where samples drawn from two of six bags limited the alleged contraband to those two bags. There, without samples or an FSL report, the material in the other bags could not be held to be contraband, and nothing showed that the samples had been taken after mixing the whole (para 11). Hariram in turn relied on the Supreme Court's bail order in Puranmal Jat, which held that the Section 37 restriction does not apply below the 50 kg commercial quantity for poppy straw (para 11). Noting more than a year in custody, the Court granted bail without expressing any opinion on the merits (paras 12-13).