TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1994 (9) TMI 341
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....nment was reduced to 10 years' RI. The imposition of fine of Rs 1 lakh as also the imprisonment in default of the payment of fine as imposed by the trial court was, however, maintained. From the Judgment and Order dated 10-4-1990 of the Kerala High Court in Crl. A. No. 414 of 1989 2. According to the prosecution case, on 12-10-1988 at about II. 1 5 p.m., the appellant was found in possession of 780 gms of charas in the first class waiting room of the railway station at Quilon. PW 6, Ashok Kumar, Sub-Inspector of Police attached to the Quilon Railway Station, on receipt of reliable information that a foreigner having charas in his possession was sitting at the Quilon Railway Station, went to the platform where PW I Constable Nataraja Pilla....
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....ound by the expert to be 'charas'. The appellant in his statement under Section 313 CrPC denied the seizure and disowned the bag from which the contraband had been recovered and seized and asserted that it was an abandoned bag and that the appellant had been unnecessarily linked up with the seizure of the contraband on misguided suspicion. 4. Though a number of submissions were made by learned counsel for the appellant, we need not detain ourselves to deal with all those submissions as in our opinion there is force in the main argument of the learned counsel for the appellant viz. that on account of the non-compliance with the provisions of Section 50 of the NDPS Act, which provisions have been held to be mandatory by this Court in State o....
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....e searched in the presence of a Gazetted Officer or a Magistrate but where the accused does not so 'require' for whatever reason his conviction would not stand vitiated, in case the option was not given to him. A similar argument had been advanced in Balbir Singh case (supra) and the Bench repelled the same after a detailed discussion and observed : (SCC p. 316, para 16) "The words 'if the person to be searched so desires' are important. One of the submissions is whether the person who is about to be searched should by himself make a request or whether it is obligatory on the part of the empowered or the authorised officer to inform such person that if he so requires, he would be produced be....
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....f Section 50 of the NDPS Act, it would still not affect the conviction because the seized articles could be used as 'evidence' of unlawful possession of a contraband. Reliance for this submission is placed on the judgment of this Court in Pooran Mal v. Director of Inspection. We are afraid the submission is misconceived and the reliance placed on the said judgment is misplaced. The judgment in Pooran Mal case only lays down that the evidence collected as a result of illegal search or seizure, could be used as evidence in proceedings against the party under the Income Tax Act. The judgment cannot be interpreted to lay down that a contraband seized as a result of illegal search or seizure, can be used to fasten that liability of unlawful poss....