Escalate NDPS cases with foreign links to MEA, Punjab & Haryana HC directs police

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 (MEA).

The ruling came as the Bench directed 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 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 mafia from Pakistan’s border, the court said that senior police officers must promptly communicate details of probe and the accused to the MEA for possibly sharing these with their counterparts abroad whenever investigations revealed the role of foreign nationals or overseas-based drug operations.

The Bench further ordered that the judgment be sent to the Directors-General of Police of Punjab, Haryana and the UT to consider internal communication to their officers.

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

Laying down the procedure to curb the menace, the court asserted, “Whenever there is any involvement of foreign nationals who are operating from abroad or drugs operations from outside India, when the quantity of drugs is significant, senior officers from the rank of SSP and above must communicate the gist of investigation and information about such foreign nationals to the MEA.”

The order, however, 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 a Jalandhar police station on June 18, 2024. A US resident is a co-accused in the case.

Rejecting the bail plea 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 HC said 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.