Escalate NDPS cases with foreign links to MEA for global action: HC

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that the fight against the drug menace cannot be confined to local investigation and cases with foreign links must be escalated to the Ministry of External Affairs. The ruling came as the bench pushed for an international crackdown by directing the Punjab Police to send details and phone numbers of a person allegedly operating a drug cartel from the US to the Centre “to enable them to consider about communicating such inputs to their counterparts and intimate the US about his involvement in heroin trafficking”.

Taking cognisance of the growing trend of heroin smuggling by the Indian drugs mafia from Pakistan’s border, the court directed that senior police officers must promptly communicate details of probe and accused to the ministry for possible sharing with counterparts abroad whenever investigations revealed the role of foreign nationals or overseas-based drug operations. The bench also ordered that the judgment be forwarded to the DGPs of Punjab, Haryana and UT “to consider internal communications to their officers”.

“The court’s dockets have ever-increasing cases under the NDPS Act, 1985, and these days, the trend of heroin being smuggled by the Indian drugs mafia from Pakistan’s border is also more noticeable. Today, even the most advanced nations of the world are finding it increasingly difficult to counter and control the rising menace of illicit drug trafficking and resultant drug abuse,” the bench asserted.

Laying down the procedure to curb the menace, the court asserted: “Whenever there is any involvement of foreign nationals operating from foreign land, or drugs operations from outside India, when the quantity of drugs is significant, the senior officers from the rank of SSP and above must communicate the gist of investigation along with the information about such foreign national to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

The order clarified that it would be for the ministry to consider whether to forward such details “to the countries from which these criminals and mafias had carried out their operations”. The ruling came on a woman’s bail plea in a drugs case registered at Division No.8 police station at Jalandhar on June 18, 2024. The US resident was a co-accused in the case.

Rejecting the plea for bail on the ground that the petitioner was a woman, the court held that the legislature had provided a separate category for them, but it would not be automatically applicable following the serious nature of the offence coupled with her criminal history. The court also noted that the petitioner’s counsel had neither referred to any studies nor cited precedents or reasons to justify why she was entitled to bail merely on the basis of being a woman.

The court observed that the legal system upheld the principle that crime and not the individual should be condemned, but a history-sheeter operated on precarious ground where “the contours of a playing field are marshy, and the graver the criminal history, the slushier the puddles”.

It added that courts must not deny bail in minor offences merely as a punitive measure or to serve as a pre-trial deterrent, but the position changes when the quantity of drugs or psychotropic substances involved was massive, which would be an additional factor disentitling an accused with criminal antecedents from bail.