SC stays bail, it’s back to jail for 26 drug convicts

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 19

The Supreme Court has stayed a Punjab and Haryana High Court order granting bail to 26 persons convicted of possession of commercial quantity of drugs and sentenced to 10-year imprisonment by trial courts across Punjab. In view of the SC order, the convicts will have to surrender and go back to jail.

A Bench headed by Justice NV Ramana stayed the January 29 order after Punjab government counsel Jaspreet Gogia pointed out that the High Court had committed a “grave error” in suspending the sentence of the convicts and giving them bail.

“There shall be stay of the final judgment and order dated January 29, 2018, passed by the High Court…,” the Bench said in its order on Wednesday.

The High Court had suspended the sentence of the convicts and ordered their release on bail on the grounds that the cases had to be tried under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, not under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.

However, in its special leave petition, Punjab contended that the High Court’s order was “in utter violation of judicial propriety” inasmuch as there were two Division Bench judgments of the same High Court in which it was held that the manufactured drugs fell under the category of narcotic drugs.

“If any unauthorised person is found in possession of bulk quantity of manufactured drugs without holding any licence or permit for the same has to be dealt under the stringent provisions of the NDPS Act as these persons are playing havoc with the life of innocent public, particularly the youth of the state,” the government counsel said.