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Nadeem Ahamed v. The State of West Bengal

Criminal Appeal · 2025 INSC 993Decided 5 Aug 2025
Crl.A. No.-003573-003574 - 2025 (arising out of SLP (Crl.) Nos. 9446-9447 of 2025)
Justice Aravind Kumar · Justice Sandeep Mehta

Background

On 16 July 2018, acting on a tip-off, Kolkata police intercepted Nadeem Ahamed and a co-accused, Amit Dutta, near Pragati Maidan and recovered heroin allegedly weighing 125 grams and 130 grams respectively from their persons. Because the combined weight (255 grams) exceeded the "commercial quantity" threshold under the NDPS Act, the trial court convicted both men under Sections 21(c) and 29 (criminal conspiracy) and sentenced Ahamed to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment. His appeal to the Calcutta High Court was filed 1,183 days late due to his financial difficulties while in custody, and the High Court dismissed it solely on grounds of delay without examining the merits.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court first held that dismissing the appeal purely for delay was too harsh given the appellant's incarceration and indigence, and proceeded to decide the case on merits itself rather than remand it (to avoid further delay). On merits, the Court held the trial court erred in clubbing the drugs recovered from the two individually-searched accused to meet the "commercial quantity" threshold: mere presence together, without positive evidence of prior knowledge or conspiracy, cannot support a Section 29 conspiracy charge (relying on Amarsingh Ramjibhai Barot v. State of Gujarat). Separately, and more decisively, the Court found serious lapses in the seizure and sampling procedure: only one sample (not the mandatory duplicate) was drawn from each packet in violation of the 1989 Standing Order, the accused's signatures were missing from the sample packet labels despite the seizure officer's claim otherwise, and, most critically, no representative samples were drawn nor inventory prepared before a Magistrate as required by Section 52A of the NDPS Act. These cumulative failures rendered the FSL (forensic) report and the entire seizure process unreliable. The Court quashed the conviction and acquitted Ahamed, ordering his immediate release.

Lesson Learnt

In NDPS prosecutions, strict procedural compliance in seizing and sampling narcotics (duplicate samples, magistrate-certified inventories, and accused's signatures on seized material) is essential: cumulative procedural lapses can render even a positive forensic report unreliable and lead to acquittal; and courts should be cautious about clubbing contraband recovered separately from co-accused to meet a "commercial quantity" threshold without actual proof of conspiracy.

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

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