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2025 (7) TMI 1450
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.... the Narcotics Control Bureau ["NCB"] apprehended one Gajender Singh, aged approximately 23-24 years, at the DTDC Courier Office, Laxmi Nagar, Delhi, while he was attempting to book a parcel. Upon search of the said parcel, 15 LSD paper blots weighing 0.3 grams were recovered from his possession. Following this, a preliminary inquiry was conducted, and based on Gajender's instance, a further search at his residence led to the recovery of an additional 650 LSD blots in his presence. 2.2 In his statement under Section 67 of the NDPS Act, Gajender confessed to his role in the attempted shipment and named one Shainu Hatwar as the person under whose instructions he was acting. Shainu Hatwar was subsequently arrested and, in her statement under Section 67, she admitted to her involvement and explained the modus operandi of the drug distribution network. She further disclosed the name and contact details of Sarabjeet Singh, a resident of Jaipur, as being the supplier of the psychotropic substances. 2.3 Acting on this information, an NCB team proceeded to Jaipur and carried out a search of the premises belonging to Sarabjeet Singh. This resulted in the seizure of 9,006 LSD blots, 2.232 k....
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....ng approximately 3.5 grams. The contraband was sealed and seized in accordance with law. On the same day, the Applicant's statement was recorded under Section 67 of the NDPS Act, in which he purportedly admitted to his role in the offence and disclosed that he was acting in concert with one Punan C.M. @ Robin. The Applicant is also stated to have shown the investigating officers a WhatsApp image relating to the seized parcel. He was, thereafter, formally arrested for offences under Sections 8(c) read with Sections 22 and 29 of the NDPS Act. 2.7 The Applicant was produced before the jurisdictional Magistrate at Kakkanad, who granted a three-day transit remand to enable his production before the Special Judge (NDPS) at Patiala House Courts, New Delhi, where the complaint proceedings are pending. It is submitted that the chargesheet has since been filed, trial has commenced, and charges have been framed against the Applicant under Sections 22(c) read with 29 of the NDPS Act. Submissions of the Applicant 3. Counsel for Petitioner raises the following grounds for seeking bail: 3.1 The entire prosecution against the Applicant rests on a tenuous foundation, and no material has been br....
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.... @ Robin, is wholly unsubstantiated and unsupported by any material on record. 3.5 The foundational requirement of "conscious possession" under the NDPS Act is absent in the present case. In the absence of conscious possession, it is argued that the statutory presumption under Section 54 of the NDPS Act is inapplicable. Reliance is placed on NCB v. Ali Mohammad 2009 SCC OnLine Del 334 and Fabian Helmchen v. State of Goa 2021 SCC OnLine Bom 1536 to submit that mere physical custody, without knowledge or dominion over the contraband, cannot attract penal consequences under the Act. 3.6 The Petitioner has continuously maintained that he had no knowledge of the parcel and was only collecting it for his neighbour - Punan C.M. @Robin. In this regard, he even showed the NCB officials the WhatsApp message sent to him by Punan @ Robin instructing him to go to collect the parcel. However, even after giving the contact details of Punan C.M. @Robin to the investigating officers and despite his mobile phone being seized by them, no investigation conducted by the NCB either to trace Punan @Robin or the actual intended recipient of the parcel. In this regard, the NCB has argued before the Trial....
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....enable in the facts of the case. The record demonstrates that the Applicant made multiple telephonic enquiries with the DTDC courier office regarding the parcel in question, and upon being contacted by the DTDC employee on the same number, he promptly arrived at the office to collect it. No cogent or credible explanation has been offered by the Applicant for this active pursuit of the parcel, particularly if he was unaware of its contents. Reliance is placed on the judgment in Rakesh Kumar Raghuvanshi v. State of Madhya Pradesh 2025 SCC OnLine SC 122 wherein the Supreme Court clarified that conscious possession does not only mean physical possession of the narcotic drug by a person but also being aware of its presence and nature. In the present case it is established that the Petitioner not only had the physical possession of the contraband but that he also had knowledge that the same contained illicit drugs. 4.2 The total quantity of the contraband recovered from the Applicant was 3.5 grams of LSD, which is above the prescribed commercial quantity threshold of 0.1 gram, the stringent rigours of Section 37 of the NDPS Act are attracted. As such, the Applicant would have to dischar....
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....or has the NCB conducted a search of his residence or unearthed any other material which would suggest involvement in the alleged drug trafficking network. In contrast, the other co-accused were arrested pursuant to specific recoveries from their residences or based on substantive links with multiple consignments. In this light, the case of the present Applicant appears to rest on a relatively narrower factual substratum. 7. The prosecution alleges that the Applicant was in conscious possession of the contraband on the ground that he had made repeated calls to the DTDC office to inquire about the parcel, and that he thereafter appeared at the courier office to collect it. It is further asserted that the Applicant was apprehended red-handed immediately after taking possession of the parcel. However, a closer examination of the record reveals that the phone number cited by the prosecution, ending in xxxxxx3290, allegedly used to contact the DTDC office, has been described in the panchnama/seizure memo dated 01st June, 2023 itself as belonging to the DTDC Kottayam office. This discrepancy was duly brought to the attention of the Trial Court, which, on an application moved by the Appl....
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.... 67 of the NDPS Act is concerned, it is relevant to note that no recovery was effected pursuant to the said statement. Furthermore, there appears to be no independent or contemporaneous evidence on record, such as CDRs, text messages, financial transactions, or any other corroborative material, linking the Applicant to the trafficking operation or demonstrating his prior knowledge of the contents of the parcel. It is well-settled that a confessional statement recorded under Section 67, in the absence of substantive corroboration, does not carry probative value and cannot be the sole basis for sustaining the accusation, particularly in light of constitutional safeguards under Articles 20(3) and 21 of the Constitution [Tofan Singh v. State of Tamil Nadu, (2021) 4 SCC 1]. 11. It is equally well settled that the concept of 'conscious possession' under the NDPS Act necessitates both, knowledge of the contraband and the ability to exercise control over it [Rakesh Kumar Raghuvanshi v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 122]. In Mohan Lal v. State of Rajasthan (2015) 6 SCC 222, the Supreme Court held that 'conscious possession' entails not only physical custody of the contraband ....