Frowning upon courts overstepping jurisdiction, the Supreme Court has set aside an order of the Allahabad High Court which directed the Director of Narcotics Control Bureau to pay Rs 5 lakh as compensation to a man for alleged wrongful confinement. A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Manmohan said the grant of compensation was without the authority of law.
The top court was hearing an appeal filed by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) challenging an order of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court.
In this case, in a joint operation, the NCB seized 1,280 grams of brown powder (allegedly heroin) from the possession of one Man Singh Verma and one Aman Singh. Accordingly, a criminal case was registered against Verma under Sections 8(C), 21 and 29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 and he was remanded to judicial custody.
While awaiting results from the laboratory, the accused filed a plea before Special Judge, NDPS, Barabanki district, seeking bail, which was rejected. The accused approached the high court against the order.
On January 30, 2023, the laboratory issued its report stating that the sample tested negative for heroin and other narcotic substances. Later, the sample was sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Chandigarh, for further examination.
On April 5, 2023, the report received from CFSL, Chandigarh, found that the second set of samples also tested negative for any narcotic substance.
As a result, the NCB filed a closure report before the Special Judge, NDPS, pursuant to which, the respondent was released from District Jail, Barabanki.
Despite the closure report and the respondent’s release, the high court proceeded to adjudicate the pending bail application and observed that the respondent was a young person who had been wrongfully confined for four months despite the initial laboratory finding and, therefore, directed the Director, NCB to pay compensation.
Commenting on the HC order, the top court said, “Time and again, the act of courts overstepping the bounds of jurisdiction, has clearly been frowned upon. The instant case is another such example. It is undisputed that the application for bail filed before the high court had become infructuous since the district court had already released the respondent herein.
“The straightforward course of action that ought to have been adopted, therefore, was that the bail application would have been dismissed as such. No occasion arose for the court to pass an order delving into the aspects of impermissibility of retesting and/or wrongful confinement,” the bench said.
The top court said not only was the same outside the bounds, as discussed above, but it is erroneous on a further count that since the application was infructuous, the exercise of jurisdiction was entirely unjustified and contrary to law.
The SC said the undue restriction of liberty, i.e. without the backing of procedures established by law is unquestionably an affront to a person’s rights, but the avenues to seek recourse of law in connection therewith are limited to remedies as per law.
