The bench of Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice V. Ramasubramanian in Criminal Appeal No. 871 of 2022 rendered a very important judgment on the law of presumption under the NDPS Act, 1985. Justice V. Ramasubramanian delivering the judgment for the Bench held in Para 33 and 33A held as under:-

33. Right from the beginning, the co­accused Reena Das (A­2) was implicated at every stage. Admittedly, the information received by
PW­7 at 16:50 hrs. on 31.05.2014 contained a reference to the appellant   as   well   as   the   co­accused   Reena   Das.   But   for   some strange reason, PW­7 chose to serve a notice under Section 50 of the Act only on the appellant and not on the co­accused.  PW­7 also
omitted   deliberately   or   otherwise,   to   record,  (i)  the   consent Panchnama  of co­accused;  (ii)  the search  Panchnama  of the coaccused; and  (iii)  the recovery  Panchnama  in relation to the coaccused. This led to the Special Court acquitting the co­accused. It is quite strange that, (i) the information received by PW­7, (ii) the FIR; and (iii) the charge­sheet implicated the co­accused, but  the prosecution accepted the finding of the Special Court that there could have been no recovery from the co­accused despite the fact
that she was also travelling in the same car.

33­A. It is true that Section 54 of the Act raises a presumption and the burden shifts on the accused to explain as to how he came
into possession of the contraband. But to raise the presumption under Section 54 of the Act, it must first be established that a
recovery was made from the accused. The moment a doubt is cast upon the most fundamental aspect, namely the search and seizure,
the appellant, in our considered opinion will also be entitled to the same benefit as given by the Special Court to the co­accused.

To read the full judgment open the following link

https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2021/4305/4305_2021_4_1501_37790_Judgement_30-Aug-2022.pdf