High Court of Himachal Pradesh: A Single Judge Bench comprising of Ajay Mohan Goel, J., decided a criminal miscellaneous petition filed under Section 439 of CrPC, wherein it declined to grant the relief of bail as prayed for by the petitioner-accused.
The petitioner was accused in a criminal case filed under Sections 21 and 29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985. The facts of the case were that 15 gms of heroin was recovered from the possession of the co-accused in this case. He told that he purchased the heroin from the petitioner herein. The incident took place in Kasol, H.P. Police searched the petitioner’s house in Delhi and recovered 1.5 kg of heroin. Learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that the entire process initiated against the petitioner by the State was illegal and without jurisdiction by the police of the State from a place beyond its jurisdiction and for this reason alone, the petitioner was entitled to be granted bail.
The High Court perused the record and was of the opinion that the recovery was made in the course of investigation which the police was conducting pursuant to the arrest of the co-accused in Kasol. The contention of the learned counsel for the petitioner that the process initiated against the petitioner by the State was illegal, void and without jurisdiction was without any merit because it was in the course of investigation of an offence committed in the State of H.P. in which involvement of the present petitioner was alleged, that the petitioner was apprehended with huge quantity of heroin in Delhi. The offence committed by the petitioner at New Delhi and the one committed at Kasol formed part of the same criminal conspiracy.
Accordingly, the contentions raised on behalf of the petitioner were found without merit and the petitioner was denied bail. [Okechuku Mathew v. State of H.P., 2017 SCC OnLine HP 1809, order dated December 29, 2017]