The Single Judge Bench of Justice Vibhu Bakhru of the Delhi High Court granted bail to a person accused under Section 20 and 29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act 1985 (hereinafter referred as ‘NDPS Act’), observing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the accused might be acquitted of offences that he has been charged with in the case.
The Petitioner in the case was represented by Advocate Akshay Bhandari and Advocate Digvijay Singh, who moved the bail application against the arrest made by the Narcotics Control Bureau for allegedly smuggling and dealing with the commercial quantity of charas.
To argue against the bail application, the NCB heavily relied upon the ‘voluntary statements’ of the accused recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act. The agency also cited various recoveries which were made in pursuance of the Section 67 statement of the accused. The Court however, took note of the fact that the issue of whether statements made under section 67 of the NDPS Act are admissible as evidence has been referred to a larger bench of the Supreme Court in Tofan Singh v. State of Tamil Nadu and also stated that such self-incriminating evidence if admissible, are weak form of evidence and can be used only to corroborate other evidences.
The Court therefore, observed the following:
“Considering the above submissions, this Court is of the view that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the petitioner may be acquitted. Admittedly, the petitioner is not involved in any other criminal case and there is no reason to believe that he would commit a similar offence, if released. It appears to be the prosecution’s case that the petitioner had begun dealing in drugs to feed his addiction. But, as noticed earlier, there is nothing on record to establish that the petitioner is a drug addict.”
