'Quantity not purity will decide punishment of Narcotic Drugs Act offenders', rules SC, Read Judgment

23 Apr 2020

Categories: Latest News

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that punishment for possessing banned drug under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act would depend on the quantity of banned substance seized from the person and not on purity of the illicit drug.

A three-judge bench of comprising of Justice Arun Mishra, Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M R Shah reversed SC's 2008 judgment in E Micheal Raj case, in which the Court had ruled that since adulterated drugs contained several neutral substances which are not psychotropic in nature, it would be wrong to punish a person based on weight of seized drug.

It had ruled that the punishment for possessing drugs, whether small or commercial quantity, would be based after determining the weight of pure banned substance and not by entire weight of seized drug.

The Court during the hearing accepted Additional Solicitor General Aman Lekhi's argument that the 2008 judgment would make it difficult to punish drug-paddlers. Lekhi agued that a 'small' quantity of heroin is 5gm, which if taken as pure drug could translate to 100gm of street level heroin.

He said:

"At the rate of 0.25 gm per dose, 100 gm can translate to 400 doses and the legislature could not have intended to let off one paddling 100 gm, which could be 5gm of pure heroin, through 400 doses as a small quantity attracting just 6 months imprisonment,".

The bench on this replied:

"Illicit drugs are seldom sold in a pure form. They are almost always adulterated or cut with other substance. Caffeine is mixed with heroin, it causes that heroin to vaporize at a lower rate.

That could allow users to take the drug faster and get a big punch sooner. Aspirin, crushed tablets, they could have enough powder to amend reversal doses of drugs. Take example of heroin. It is known as powerful and illegal street drug and opiate derived from morphine. This drug can easily be “cut” with a variety of different substances. This means that drug dealer will add other drugs or non -intoxicating substances to the drug so that they can sell more of it at lesser expense to themselves."

The judgement has been delivered by Justice Arun Mishra, Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M R Shah on 22-04-2020.

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