The Supreme Court set aside a Rajasthan High Court order granting regular bail to a man accused of raping his niece, holding that the order was "cryptic, and does not suggest any application of mind" (para 22). It said the High Court ignored the gravity of the offence, his nearly twenty pending cases and his influence as an elder relative (para 21), and directed him to surrender within a week (para 24).
The Supreme Court restored the acquittal of two men whom the Himachal Pradesh High Court had convicted for possessing 1.5 kg of charas (paras 1, 3, 11). The High Court had reappraised the evidence without dealing with the reasons that weighed with the Trial Court, although an acquittal reinforces the presumption of innocence and an appellate court must be "extremely slow" to interfere where two views are possible (paras 7-8).
The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal against a ganja conviction in which the accused argued that offering him a third option of search by the officer himself, outside Section 50(1) of the NDPS Act, vitiated the recovery (paras 1, 4, 6). As the contraband was found in a polythene bag carried on a kanwad and "The recovery was not in person", the Court declined to extend the Section 50 principle to recoveries made otherwise (para 5).
The Supreme Court refused to cancel the bail of five NDPS accused whose arrests rested essentially on statements of themselves and co-accused under Section 67, which Tofan Singh makes inadmissible at trial; call records were left for trial (paras 9-10). But it cancelled the bail of one accused from whose rented flat commercial quantities were recovered, holding that he could not claim parity in the face of Section 37 (para 11).
The Supreme Court restored the interest component of an arbitral award in favour of UHL Power Company against Himachal Pradesh over a terminated hydro-electric project, holding that the High Court's view that arbitrators cannot award compound interest rested on S.L. Arora, since overruled in Hyder Consulting. It also upheld the findings that the MoU merged into the Implementation Agreement and that the State terminated it prematurely (paras 6, 10-13, 22).
The Supreme Court upheld a conviction for possessing 900 grams of smack found beneath the seat of a motorcycle stopped by a police patrol (paras 2-4, 19). It held that the seizure was "a chance recovery on a public road" governed by Section 43 of the NDPS Act, that Section 50 applies to a personal search and not to a vehicle, and that ownership of the motorcycle and non-production of the contraband did not help the accused (paras 11-15).
The Supreme Court set aside bail granted by the Allahabad High Court to an accused found travelling from Dimapur towards Rampur in a car with 3.3 kg of morphine hidden near its wiper. That nothing was recovered from his person, and that the translator's endorsement on his Section 67 statement named a co-accused, did not meet the Section 37 test of reasonable grounds to believe he was not guilty (paras 21, 25, 30-32).
The Supreme Court acquitted three men convicted under Section 15 of the NDPS Act after 75 kg of poppy straw was found in a private jeep on a public road. A private vehicle is not a public place under the Explanation to Section 43, so Section 42 applied; the officer admittedly never recorded the secret information in writing, and total non-compliance with Section 42 is impermissible (paras 12-15).
The Supreme Court upheld a 15-year sentence for possession of 1 kg of heroin, four times the minimum commercial quantity, though the NDPS Act's minimum is ten years. Section 32B lets courts weigh such factors as they deem fit beyond clauses (a) to (f), and the quantity of drugs is one; being poor, a carrier or the sole breadwinner is no ground for leniency in NDPS sentencing (paras 6, 7).
The Supreme Court cancelled bail granted by the Allahabad High Court to a company director accused of diverting acetic anhydride, a controlled substance, as part of an alleged international drug syndicate. The High Court merely recorded the submissions, never applied Section 37 of the NDPS Act, and relied on the extraneous ground that the accused was educated and so "may not commit any offence" (paras 11-13).
The Supreme Court dismissed the NIA's appeal against bail granted to a UAPA accused who had spent over five years in custody with 276 witnesses still to be examined (paras 6, 15, 21). Section 43-D(5) of the UAPA "per-se does not oust the ability of Constitutional Courts to grant bail on grounds of violation of Part III of the Constitution", and its rigours "will melt down" where a timely trial is unlikely and much of the sentence has already been undergone (para 18).
The Supreme Court granted bail to actress Ragini Dwivedi, jailed since September 2020 in Bengaluru's alleged drug-party case. No drugs were found at her home and the case rested on another person's statement; at most an offence of consuming drugs under Section 27 was made out, so the courts below wrongly applied the Section 37 bar on bail (paras 6-8).