Supreme Court: In a criminal special leave to appeal against the Judgment of Rajasthan High Court, whereby the accused person’s bail application for offences under Section 8 read with Section 18 and 25 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (‘NDPS’) was dismissed, the Division Bench of Hrishikesh Roy and Sanjay Karol, JJ. allowed the appeal and granted him bail.
In the matter at hand, a First Information Report (‘FIR’) was registered against the accused by the Narcotic Control Bureau, Jodhpur officers on 19-08-2017. On account of the said FIR, a complaint was registered before the Additional Sessions Judge, Special Judge, NDPS Act against the accused for offences under Section 8 read with Section 18 and 25 of the NDPS Act. The accused person moved a bail application before the Additional Sessions Judge, which was dismissed. Subsequently, the accused moved his bail application before the High Court, which was dismissed forming the impugned order. Hence, the present appeal. The accused person’s case was that he was in incarceration for a period of six years and two months, which is more than half the period of the punishment for the offences he was charged with.
The Court noted that the contraband in question was about 10-12 kg of Opium. It was also brought to the Court’s attention that four prosecution witnesses had testified before the trial Court and only eight more witnesses remained. Therefore, the Court said that trial was not likely to be concluded on a near date and the accused was incarcerated for over six years as an under-trial prisoner. Thus, the accused was granted bail being subject to appropriate bail conditions.
[Deva Ram v. State of Rajasthan, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 1267, Order dated 5-10-2023]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the accused: Advocate on Record Namit Saxena, Advocate Awnish Maithani, Advocate Shivam Raghuwanshi
For the respondent: Advocate Rahul Kumar, Advocate Kavita Bhardwaj, Advocate Vishesh Kumar, Advocate Shubham Sethi, Advocate on Record Pragati Neekhra, Additional Solicitor General of India Aishwarya Bhati, Advocate Rustam Singh Chauhan, Advocate Rajat Nair, Advocate Kanu Agarwal, Advocate Swarupama Chaturvedi, Advocate Pratyush Shrivastava, Advocate on Record Arvind Kumar Sharma, AOR
*Deeksha Dabas, Editorial Assistant has reported this brief.
