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Directorate of Revenue Intelligence v. Raj Kumar Arora

Criminal Appeal · 2025 INSC 498Decided 17 Apr 2025
Crl.A. No.-001319-001319 - 2013 (heard with Criminal Appeal No. 272 of 2014)
Justice J.B. Pardiwala · Justice Manoj Misra

Background

In 2003, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence officers seized over 40,000 unlabelled ampoules of Buprenorphine Hydrochloride (an injectable psychotropic substance capable of being abused as a narcotic) from business premises in Delhi and a manufacturing unit in Haryana, without any valid licence, and arrested the respondents including Raj Kumar Arora. The Trial Court and Delhi High Court had held that no offence was made out under the NDPS Act because Buprenorphine, while listed in the Schedule to the NDPS Act itself, was not separately listed in Schedule I of the NDPS Rules, and on that basis transferred the case to be dealt with only under the milder Drugs and Cosmetics Act, effectively deleting the NDPS charges before trial.

Decision Breakdown

In a lengthy judgment spanning nearly 190 pages, the Supreme Court held that a substance's mere absence from Schedule I of the NDPS Rules does not take it outside the NDPS Act if it is already listed in the Schedule to the Act itself: the NDPS Rules operate "in addition to," not as a replacement for, the substantive coverage of the Act. The Court held that its earlier ruling in Sanjeev V. Deshpande clarifying this point applies retrospectively (not just to future cases), since it merely clarified existing law rather than creating a new offence, so no constitutional bar under Article 20(1) against retrospective criminal liability was triggered. It further held that Trial Courts have no power under Section 216 CrPC to delete or discharge an already-framed charge, that provision only permits altering or adding to a charge, so both trial courts had acted illegally in transferring the cases away from NDPS jurisdiction. The Court restored the NDPS charges and directed that the accused be tried by the Special NDPS Judge.

Lesson Learnt

Once a criminal charge has been properly framed against an accused, it must be resolved by conviction or acquittal at trial: procedural provisions like Section 216 CrPC cannot be misused as a backdoor route to discharge a case mid-trial; and a Supreme Court ruling that merely clarifies the correct reading of an existing law will normally apply to past conduct as well as future cases.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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