Abstract

In India, all drug related offences are dealt with and under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS). 36A(4) in particular is of special interest for this essay due to the confounding jurisprudence it has produced giving rise to a concerning dissonance in the rights of stakeholders in the criminal process of India. 36A(4) extends investigative deadlines allowing agencies 180 days to complete investigations instead of the usual 90 days provided as per section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CRPC). It is to be noticed that though, the NDPS (Seizure, Storage, Sampling, and Disposal) Rules, 2022 require that a sample be tested within fifteen days of its receipt chargesheets are regularly submitted without a Forensic Science Laboratory Report (FSL), because the rules do not prescribe a consequence for not conducting the test within fifteen days, regardless of this anomaly in law, can a chargesheet which has been submitted without an FSL be deemed complete? This question is important to answer because the path which a court chooses to tread here, determines whether or not the sanctity of article 21 is upheld. As of now this question is yet to be decided in the form of a reference before the Supreme Court. In this paper, I will undertake a doctrinal analysis of the judgments to discredit the tenability of the conservative anti-bail school of jurisprudence which has emerged owing to incorrect and contrarian interpretation of sections related to investigation and chargesheets by various high courts. In doing so we will end by seeing why the interpretations developed by the pro-bail school be adopted due to criminal law principles and ground reality of NDPS offences.

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