NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has on Thursday ruled that once it is established that the seized 'poppy straw' tests positive for the contents of 'morphine' and 'meconic acid', no other test would be necessary for bringing home the guilt of the accused under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Act.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and C T Ravikumar interpreted the provisions of the law while answering the questions including if it is necessary to particularize the species of the contraband recovered, poppy husk, poppy straw etc and whether it is necessary for the prosecution to bring in additional materials.
The court noted international developments to control drugs and psychotropic substances as well as several scientific studies in its judgement.
The bench pointed out that before the enactment of 1985 law, the country had, for the last many years, been increasingly faced with the problem of trafficking of drugs, which had posed serious troubles to governments at the state and Centre.
"It was found necessary to enact a comprehensive law. It is thus clear that the dominant purpose of the new enactment was to curb the menace of trafficking of drugs and psychotropic substances. Therefore, the interpretation which advances the purpose of the Act has to be preferred rather than adopting a pedantic and a mechanical approach," the bench said.
The matter before the court arose out of an appeal by the Himachal Pradesh government against an order of the High Court which had set aside conviction and sentence of a woman, Nirmal Kaur from whom, eight gunny bags each containing 40 Kgs of ‘poppy husk’ and one bag containing 30 Kgs of ‘poppy husk’ were recovered.
"The High Court was not justified in holding that, even after the Chemical Examiner’s report shows that the contraband contains ‘meconic acid’ and ‘morphine’ and unless it was established that the same was derived from the species of ‘papaver somniferum L’, conviction under Section 15 of the 1985 Act could not be sustained," the bench said.
"Once it is established that the seized material contains ‘meconic acid’ and ‘morphine’, it will be sufficient to establish that it is derived from the plant ‘papaver somniferum L’ as defined in sub-clause (a) of Clause (xvii) of Section 2 of the 1985 Act," the bench added.
The top court sent back the matter to the High Court for considering it afresh.
