The Punjab and Haryana High Court’s Single bench of Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri recently expressed dismay over the conduct of Police officials, who were the official witnesses in a NDPS case, for not deposing despite issuance of multiple bailable, non-bailable and arrest warrants. "It is actually very surprising that the police officials were summoned by way of bailable, non-bailable and by way of arrest warrants … it is rather shocking that the charges in the present case were framed on 18.02.2022, which is almost ten months ago … once the criminal law is set into motion by the police itself, it is a duty of the police officials especially in the NDPS matters to depose before the Court, but on large number of times they did not depose despite repeated warrants."

The Court thus granted bail to the accused, stating that the conduct of the Police led it to draw adverse inference against the prosecution. The Court reiterated that right to speedy trial is a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution. It observed:

"The delay in prosecution has been caused at the hands of the prosecution witnesses and the consequence of the same was that the petitioner had to face incarceration for about 1.5 years. The conduct of the prosecution and the police party who had set the criminal law into motion would lead this Court to draw adverse inference against the prosecution … this Court has prima facie reasons to believe at this stage that the petitioner is not guilty of the offence."

Based on this inference, the Court concluded that in its belief, the petitioner was not guilty of the aforesaid offence at that stage – satisfying the first condition of Section 37 of the NDPS Act. Regarding the second condition, the Court observed that it was not the case of the State nor had it been so argued by the State that the petitioner may repeat the offence or abscond from justice or influence any witness, were he released on bail.

Case Title: Sukhwinder Singh v. State of Punjab
Citation: CRM-47812 of 2022 in/and CRM-M-48421 of 2021 (O&M)