The Supreme Court has upheld a 15-year NDPS conviction, rejecting the claim that mixing 73 seized packets before drawing samples breached Section 52A. It found no procedural lapse on the record, and separately held that Section 52A creates an additional route to primary evidence, not the only one, so other proof of recovery can still sustain a conviction.
The Supreme Court has set aside a Delhi High Court order that granted an NDPS accused bail solely because compliance with Section 52A was delayed. Delay or non-compliance with Section 52A, it held, is a procedural irregularity, not an illegality, and does not by itself justify bail or vitiate the trial. The bail application goes back for fresh consideration.
The Supreme Court quashed Section 58 NDPS proceedings that a Kurukshetra Special Judge began against former SP Bharti Arora after an opium trial. An offence under Section 58, punishable with at most two years, must be tried summarily by a Magistrate under Section 36-A(5); the findings against her were recorded without notice, ignored the good-faith protection in Section 69, and the sealed-cover order was rushed through in breach of natural justice (paras 21-40).
The Supreme Court held that a direction to pay a fine "is also a sentence" that the appellate court may suspend under Section 389(1) CrPC, with or without conditions (paras 5-6, 8). It refused to disturb a Delhi High Court order of 2016 suspending the sentence of a convict in a CBI corruption case, treating his deposit of Rs. 15 lakh as the condition for suspending a fine of Rs. 95 lakh (paras 1, 7, 10).
The Supreme Court granted bail to Kalvakuntla Kavitha in a Directorate of Enforcement complaint case and a CBI case, holding that the Delhi High Court erred in reading the proviso to Section 45(1) of the PMLA as applicable only to a "vulnerable woman" (paras 22, 28-29). When a statute gives a category of accused special treatment, a court denying it must give specific reasons (para 17). With the investigation complete and a long trial ahead, custody was unnecessary (paras 10-11).
The Supreme Court set aside bail granted to an HIV-positive woman accused of possessing 1.040 kg of heroin, because the Meghalaya High Court granted it only on her HIV status without recording satisfaction of the twin conditions in Section 37(1)(b)(ii) of the NDPS Act. It ordered her surrender, but directed the trial court to decide her case on priority under Section 34(2) of the HIV and AIDS Act, 2017 (paras 5-13).
The Supreme Court acquitted Firdoskhan, said to have fled when 2 kg 30 g of heroin was seized at Kheda bus stand in 2003. His name surfaced only in the co-accused's Section 67 statement, inadmissible after Tofan Singh and doubtful in the way it was recorded, and an NCB officer identified him for the first time in court over two years later (paras 24-30). The co-accused caught with the bag stayed convicted (para 33).
The Supreme Court acquitted three men convicted of carrying about 80 kg of ganja in Hyderabad. The weight included unseparated green chillies, three samples reached the laboratory although one of three had been given to the accused, the ganja was repacked into unsealed bags, and no Section 52A sampling was done, so the FSL report was worthless. Two appellants were convicted only on co-accused's interrogation notes (paras 19-25).
The Supreme Court set aside a Karnataka High Court judgment that had reversed an acquittal and convicted the appellants of a 1997 murder, and restored the Trial Court's acquittal (paras 1, 39). It held that "A decision of acquittal is not meant to be reversed on a mere difference of opinion. What is required is an illegality or perversity" (para 25), and summarised six principles for appeals against acquittal (para 36).
The Supreme Court dismissed, with costs of Rs. 1 lakh, a former Deputy Secretary's appeal against refusal of bail in a money-laundering case (paras 2, 30). The first proviso to Section 45 of the PMLA, which allows bail to a woman, is discretionary and "could not be construed as a mandatory or obligatory on the part of the Court to release them" (para 24). The Court also strongly deprecated misstatements made in the special leave petition (paras 12, 15).
The Supreme Court upheld a conviction for 1.25 kg of charas found in a bag the accused carried on his shoulder. Although Section 50 of the NDPS Act was breached by offering him a third option of being searched by the police officer, the provision did not apply because only the bag was searched. The Court also directed that, prospectively, a suspect's waiver of the right to be searched before a Gazetted Officer or Magistrate must be taken in writing (paras 27, 30, 63, 125).
Applying Tofan Singh, the Supreme Court acquitted Balwinder Singh, whose conviction for possessing about 4 kg of heroin rested only on his own and a co-accused's Section 67 statements to NCB officers; without them, the link to the offence snapped (paras 11-13). But it upheld the conviction of the driver, Satnam Singh, because the recovery from the car he owned and drove was proved by an independent witness, NCB officers and the chemical report (paras 14, 17-19, 27).