Shashwati Chowdhury
Published on: July 29, 2022 at 19:14 IST
According to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, an accused who was not initially named in a FIR cannot claim that he was afterwards named by another accused in a disclosure statement in order to obtain the concession of pre-arrest bail in a drugs case.
Justice Avneesh Jhingan of the High Court said “the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act is a self-contained statute which specifically deals with the menace of drugs. Stringent provisions have been provided for dealing with such cases. The ground that the petitioner was named in a disclosure statement in itself cannot be the sole consideration for the grant of pre-arrest bail.”
Justice Jhingan also made it clear that the accused in the case was allegedly a supplier of the the recovered contraband. As a result, a more thorough investigation was needed to identify the modus operandi and supply chain.
The assertion was made in response to a petition for anticipatory bail submitted by the defendant in a case against the State of Haryana and other respondents on July 4 under the provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act at the Tohana City Police Station in the Fatehabad district.
During the hearing, it was told before Justice Jhingan’s Bench that a police party apprehended two people while they were in a car and were recovering more than 2 kg of opium from them. During interrogation, a co-accused disclosed that the recovered contraband was purchased from the petitioner, at which point he was nominated in the FIR.
According to his attorney, the petitioner was later named in the disclosure statement but was not mentioned in the FIR or apprehended from the spot. In the meantime, the state’s attorney submitted that the petitioner had been charged in six additional FIRs, including two under the NDPS Act, and was a habitual criminal.
The Supreme Court had decided that the advantage of recovery’s absence and the surfacing of the name in the disclosure statement might be used at the time of arguing regular bail or during the trial, Justice Jhingan added in dismissing the plea.
In such circumstances, anticipatory bail was not warranted. The petitioner’s involvement in six further cases revealed his history. Therefore, there was no ground to support the award of anticipatory bail.