In Brief
Two individuals, Smt. Najmunisha and Abdul Hamid Chandmiya, were convicted of drug trafficking offences under the NDPS Act, 1985 based on recovery of charas from an abandoned auto-rickshaw and from a house. The Supreme Court acquitted them, holding that: (1) statements recorded under Section 67 of NDPS Act cannot be used as confessional statements to convict an accused; (2) the search of the house was not a legal continuation of the authorized auto-rickshaw search but a separate transaction requiring independent statutory compliance, which was lacking; (3) the statutory safeguards were breached and rights of the accused were not protected; and (4) without valid confessional statements and with compromised evidence, conviction could not be sustained beyond reasonable doubt.
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