Delhi High Court – Orders
State vs Jeet Ram & Anr on 16 July, 2026
Author: Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav
Bench: Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav
$~24
* IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI
+ CRL.L.P. 225/2021
STATE .....Petitioner
Through: Mr. Shoaib Haider, APP.
versus
JEET RAM & ANR. .....Respondents
Through: Mr. Anil Kumar, Advocate for R-2.
CORAM:
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE PURUSHAINDRA KUMAR KAURAV
ORDER
% 16.07.2026
The lawyers’ are abstaining from work due to the enhancement of the
pecuniary jurisdiction of the District Courts in Delhi from Rs.2 Crores to
Rs.10 Crores.
1. The present appeal has been preferred by the State under Section 36B
of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (“NDPS Act“)
read with Section 378 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (“Cr.P.C.”),
assailing the judgment dated 28.02.2020 (“impugned judgment”) passed by
the learned Special Judge-02, NDPS Act, Central District, Tis Hazari
Courts, Delhi (“the Trial Court”), in FIR No. 19/2017, registered at P.S.
Crime Branch, under Sections 20(b)(ii)(B) and 29 of the NDPS Act,
whereby the Trial Court acquitted Respondent no. 1, Jeet Ram of the charge
under Section 20(b)(ii)(B) and Respondent no. 2 the charge under Section
29 of the NDPS Act, extending to them the benefit of doubt.
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2. The prosecution‟s case, is that on 16.02.2017, at about 11:45 a.m., on
the footpath opposite ISBT Kashmere Gate, Delhi, respondent no. 1, Jeet
Ram was apprehended by a team of the Crime Branch and 500 grams of
charas was recovered from his conscious possession, concealed in a bag he
was carrying.
3. On interrogation, Jeet Ram is stated to have disclosed that he had
procured the contraband from respondent no. 2, Gyan Chand for onward
supply to persons identified only as “Shree” and “Vikas”. FIR No. 19/2017
was accordingly registered and upon completion of investigation, a
chargesheet was filed under Section 20(b) read with Section 29 of the NDPS
Act against both respondents.
4. Charges under Section 29 of the NDPS Act were framed against both
respondents, and an additional charge under Section 20(b)(ii)(B) was framed
against respondent no. 1.
5. In their statements recorded under Section 313 Cr.P.C., both
respondents denied the incriminating circumstances put to them and pleaded
false implication. Upon appraisal of this evidence, the Trial Court rendered
the impugned judgment acquitting both respondents.
6. On a cumulative assessment, the Trial Court concluded that the
prosecution‟s case was “riddled with lacunae, gaping holes and glaring
defects,” and the marked variations in the depositions of the recovery
witnesses on the form and appearance of the substance and on the sampling
procedure rendered the recovery doubtful. Respondent no. 1 was
accordingly entitled to the benefit of doubt and stood acquitted of the charge
under Section 20(b)(ii)(B) of the NDPS Act.
7. Qua respondent no. 2, Gyan Chand, the Trial Court held that the
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material relied upon to connect him with the offence, namely, the disclosure
made by Respondent no. 1 while in custody, the CDRs of the two
respondents, and two bank deposits of Rs. 20,000/- each was, “in itself not
sufficient for making of any kind of assumptions and drawing of any manner
of inferences.” Since Respondent No. 1 had already been extended the
benefit of doubt on the substantive recovery, the Trial Court held that the
case against Respondent No.2 “had no legs to stand on,” and acquitted both
respondents of the charge under Section 29 of the NDPS Act.
8. Mr. Shoaib Haider, learned APP appearing for the State, assails the
impugned judgment principally on the grounds that the discrepancies
regarding the shape and colour of the recovered substance are immaterial in
view of the unambiguous FSL opinion identifying it as charas. He submits
that the recovery witnesses were in fact unanimous on the sampling
procedure, who deposed that two 25-gram samples were drawn by SI Jai
Prakash (PW-8) and that the case property was duly produced and identified
at trial as Ex. P-1 to P-3.
9. It is respondents case that impugned judgment, represents a
conscientious and complete appraisal of the entire body of evidence led by
the prosecution, and discloses no illegality, infirmity or perversity
warranting interference. It is submitted that the present petition merely
reargues the case that was urged before, and rejected by, the Trial Court,
without demonstrating that the view taken is either impossible or
unreasonable, and is accordingly liable to be dismissed.
10. The Privy Council in Sheo Swarup v. King Emperor1, in a
formulation that continues to anchor this branch of the law, held that while
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the High Court possesses full power to review the evidence in an appeal
from an order of acquittal as it does in an appeal from conviction, it must
nonetheless always give proper weight and consideration to parameters
produced hereinunder:-
“But in exercising the power conferred by the Code and before reaching
its conclusions upon fact, the High Court should and will always give
proper weight and consideration to such matters as:
1) The views/opinions of the trial judge as to the credibility of the
witness;
2) The presumption of innocence in favour of the accused;
3) The right of the accused to the benefit of any doubt; and
4) The slowness of an appellate court in disturbing a finding of fact
arrived at by a judge who had the advantage of seeing the
witnesses.
11. This formulation was reiterated by the Supreme Court in M.G.
Agarwal v. State of Maharashtra2, and has since been consistently
followed, most recently in Siju Kurian v. State of Karnataka3, where the
Supreme Court reaffirmed that these considerations are not mere formalities
but substantive checks on appellate interference. Paragraph no. 16 of M.G.
Agarwal (supra) is reproduced as under:-
“16. Section 423 (1) prescribes the powers of the appellate Court in
disposing of appeals preferred before it and clauses (a) and (b) deal with
appeals against acquittals and appeals against convictions respectively.
There is no doubt that the power conferred by clause (a) which deals with
an appeal against an order of acquittal is as wide as the power conferred
by clause (b) which deals with an appeal against an order of conviction,
and so, it is obvious that the High Court’s powers in dealing with criminal
appeals are equally wide whether the appeal in question is one against
acquittal or against conviction. That is one aspect of the question. The
other aspect of the question centres round the approach which the High
Court adopts in dealing with appeals against orders of acquittal. In
dealing with such appeals, the High Court ;naturally bears in mind the
presumption of innocence in favour of an accused person and cannot lose
sight of the fact that the said presumption is strengthened by the order of1
1934 SCC OnLine PC 42
2
1963 SCR (2) 405
3
(2023) 14 SCC 63This is a digitally signed order.
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acquittal passed in his favour by the trial Court and so, the fact that the
accused person is entitled to the benefit of a reasonable doubt will always
be present in the mind of the High Court when it deals with the merits of
the case. As an appellate Court the High Court is generally slow in
disturbing the finding of fact recorded by the trial Court, particularly
when the said finding is based on an appreciation of oral evidence
because the trial Court has the advantage of watching the demeanour of
the witnesses who have given evidence. Thus, though the powers of the
High Court in dealing with an appeal against acquittal are as wide as
those which it has in dealing with an appeal against conviction, in-dealing
with the former class of appeals, its approach is governed by the
overriding consideration flowing from the presumption of innocence.
Sometimes, the width- of the power is emphasized, while on other
occasions, the necessity to adopt a cautious approach in dealing with
appeals against acquittals is emphasised, and the emphasis is expressed in
different words or phrases used from time to time. But the true legal
position is that however circumspect and cautious the approach of the
High Court may be in dealing with appeals against acquittals, it is
undoubtedly entitled to reach its own conclusions upon the evidence
adduced by the prosecution in respect of the guilt or innocence of the
accused. this position has been clarified by the Privy Council in Sheo
Swarup v. The, King Emperor (1) and Nur Mohammad v. Emperor
12. The general principles governing the exercise of this jurisdiction were
authoritatively summarised by the Supreme Court in Chandrappa v. State of
Karnataka4, holding that “an appellate court has full power to review,
reappreciate and reconsider the evidence upon which an order of acquittal is
founded, and the Cr.P.C. places no restriction on the exercise of that power.”
Expressions such as “substantial and compelling reasons,” “good and
sufficient grounds” or “glaring mistakes” are not intended to curtail this
power, but are, in the words of the Supreme Court, merely “flourishes of
language” emphasising the appellate court‟s reluctance to interfere.
Paragraph 42 is reproduced as under:-
“42.From the above decisions, in our considered view, the following
general principles regarding powers of the appellate court while dealing4
(2007) 4 SCC 415This is a digitally signed order.
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with an appeal against an order of acquittal emerge”
(1)An appellate court has full power to review, reappreciated and
reconsider the evidence upon which the order of acquittal is founded.
(2) The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 puts no limitation, restriction
or condition on exercise of such power and an appellate court on the
evidence before it may reach its own conclusion, both on questions of fact
and law.
(3) Various expressions, such as, “substantiated and compelling reasons”,
goof and sufficient grounds”, very strong circumstances”, “distorted
conclusions”, “glaring mistakes”, etc. are not intended to curtail
extensive powers of an appellate court in an appeal against acquittal.
Such phraseologies are more in the nature of “flourishes” of “language”
to emphasise the reluctance of an appellate court to interfere with
acquittal than to curtail the power of the court to review the evidence and
to come to its own conclusion.
(4) An appellate court, however, must bear in mind that in case of
acquittal, there is double presumption in favour of the accused. Firstly, the
presumption of innocence is available to him under the fundamental
principle of criminal jurisprudence that every person shall be presumed to
be innocent unless he is proved guilty by a competent court of law.
Secondly, the accused having secured his acquittal, the presumption of his
innocence is further reinforced, reaffirmed and strengthened by the trial
court.
(5) If two reasonable conclusions are possible on the basis of the evidence
on record, the appellate court”.
13. This Court had occasion to apply this framework in State v. Ravi
Kumar5, where leave to appeal against an acquittal was declined on the
ground that the State had failed to demonstrate that the trial Court‟s view
was anything other than a plausible one, notwithstanding that certain
individual observations of the trial court were themselves open to debate.
14. The Supreme Court‟s decision in Ramesh Babulal Doshi v. State of
Gujarat6 supplies the analytical discipline that an appellate court must bring
to this exercise. It requires the appellate court, before embarking upon any
independent reappraisal of the evidence, to first pose a threshold question:
5
MANU/DEOR/48163/2025
6
(1996) 9 SCC 225This is a digitally signed order.
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do the findings of the trial court suffer from any of the recognised
infirmities, namely, that the approach is vitiated by manifest error of law or
fact, that it results in a miscarriage of justice, or that the conclusion is one
that could not reasonably have been reached on the material on record.
15. Only if this threshold question is answered in the affirmative does the
appellate court proceed to reappraise the evidence and substitute its own
conclusion; if it is answered in the negative, the acquittal must stand
undisturbed, however persuasively an alternative view might be constructed.
Paragraph No. 7 of Ramesh Babulal (supra) is reproduced as under:
“7. Before proceeding further it will be pertinent to mention that the entire
approach of the High Court in dealing with the appeal was patently wrong
for it did not at all address itself to the question as to whether the reasons
which weighed with the trial Court for recording the order of acquittal
were proper or not. Instead thereof the High Court made an independent
reappraisal of the entire evidence to arrive at the above quoted
conclusions. This Court has repeatedly laid down that the mere fact that a
view other than the one taken by the trial Court can be legitimately arrived
at by the appellate Court on reappraisal of the evidence cannot constitute
a valid and sufficient ground to interfere with an order of acquittal unless
it comes to the conclusion that the entire approach of the trial Court in
dealing with the evidence was patently illegal or the conclusions arrived at
by it were wholly untenable. While sitting in judgment over an acquittal
the appellant Court is first required to seek an answer to the question
whether the findings of the trial Court are palpably wrong, manifestly
erroneous or demonstrably unsustainable. If the appellant Court answers
the above question in the negative the order of acquittal is not to be
disturbed. Conversely, if the appellant Court holds, for reasons to be
recorded, that the order of acquittal cannot at all be sustained in view of
any of the above infirmities it can then – and then only – reappraise the
evidence to arrive at its own conclusions. In keeping with the above
principles we have therefore to first ascertain whether the findings of the
trial Court are sustainable or not.”
16. The Supreme Court in Ghurey Lal v. State of Uttar Pradesh7
7
(2008) 10 SCC 450
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reinforced this position by holding that an appellate Court reviewing an
acquittal must attach due weight to the trial Court‟s finding, because the
presumption of innocence is “further strengthened” by it, and must reverse
the acquittal only where there exist “very substantial and compelling
reasons”.
17. It is against this settled matrix of law that the submissions of the State
must be tested, and it bears emphasis that the question before this Court at
this stage is not whether an alternative view of the evidence is possible, but
whether the view actually taken by the Trial Court is one that no reasonable
court, applying its mind to the record, could have taken.
18. Taking up the grounds urged by the State, the submission that the
discrepancy regarding the form and colour of the substance is rendered
immaterial by the FSL opinion proceeds on a partial reading of the
impugned judgment. The FSL report speaks to the chemical composition of
the sample that was, in fact, sent for analysis. It says nothing about whether
that sample can safely be traced back, without a break in the chain of
custody, to the substance actually recovered from Respondent no. 1 on
16.02.2017.
19. It is precisely this link, between seizure and analysis, that the Trial
Court found missing, on account of the divergent descriptions given by three
witnesses who each claimed to have contemporaneously observed the very
same substance, and the disappearance of the towel that the seizure memo
itself recorded as part of the recovered case property. Viewed in isolation,
the shape and colour discrepancies might well be dismissed as the kind of
minor variation that trial and appellate Courts are routinely, and correctly,
cautioned not to treat as fatal.
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20. But the Trial Court did not treat them in isolation; it treated them as
one strand in a larger pattern of inconsistency that, taken cumulatively with
the non-production of Mark „S1‟ and the unexplained absence of the towel,
was capable of raising a reasonable doubt as to whether the contraband
produced and analysed was, in fact, the contraband seized. That is a
plausible, and indeed a fairly conventional, basis on which acquittal is
founded in NDPS matters, where the integrity of the sample is often the
fulcrum on which the entire prosecution turns.
21. The State‟s submission that the earlier Section 52-A proceedings
sufficiently substituted for production of Mark „S1‟ does not answer the
Trial Court‟s concern; it does not explain why the sample itself, once drawn
and marked, could not be produced, nor does it account for the missing
inventory and photographs that the statutory scheme contemplates as
safeguards precisely for cases such as this.
22. As regards Respondent no.2, Gyan Chand, his prosecution rested
entirely on the disclosure statement made by Respondent no.1 while in
custody itself of limited evidentiary value against a co-accused in the
absence of independent corroboration, together with CDR evidence
establishing contact between the two respondents and two bank transfers of
Rs. 20,000/- each.
23. The Trial Court‟s assessment that this material does not permit a court
to draw an inference of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be said to be
an unreasonable one. Contact between two persons and transfer of money
between them are, without independent proof of the underlying transaction
alleged, equally consistent with innocent explanations. This becomes only
more so once the substantive recovery from Respondent No.1 is itself under
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a cloud, since the case against Respondent No.2 as the alleged source of the
contraband is, definitionally, parasitic upon the reliability of that recovery.
24. Applying the two-question test articulated in Ramesh Babulal Doshi
(supra) as to whether the Trial Court‟s findings suffer from any manifest
error of law or fact, or result in a miscarriage of justice, or are conclusions
that could not reasonably have been reached on the material on record. This
Court finds that none of these infirmities is made out. The Trial Court‟s
judgment reflects a discipline in evidentiary appreciation: it examined each
witness‟s testimony on its own terms, cross-checked one recovery witness‟s
version against another‟s, tested the documentary trail against the oral
evidence, and arrived at a conclusion that, whatever view this Court might
independently be inclined to take on a bare reading of the record, cannot be
characterised as palpably wrong, wholly unsustainable, or perverse within
the meaning of Ghurey Lal (supra).
25. It is well settled that in a case built substantially on recovery, as an
offence under the NDPS Act ordinarily is, the sanctity of the chain of
custody is not a technicality but the very foundation on which the
prosecution‟s edifice must rest. Where three eyewitnesses to a single,
contemporaneous act of recovery and sampling render materially divergent
accounts, where the very sample drawn under judicial supervision to guard
against disputes of this kind is not produced, and where an item expressly
recorded as part of the seized case property vanishes without explanation, a
court is not merely entitled, but is bound, to pause and ask whether the chain
has, in fact, remained unbroken.
26. The Trial Court asked precisely that question and answered it in the
negative. That is a plausible view of the evidence, indeed, on the facts as
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recorded, a fairly compelling one, and this Court is not persuaded that it
discloses the “substantial and compelling reasons” that alone would justify
interference with an order of acquittal.
27. For the foregoing reasons, this Court is of the considered opinion that
the State has failed to demonstrate that the impugned judgment dated
28.02.2020 suffers from any manifest illegality, perversity, or error apparent
on the face of the record. The view taken by the Trial Court is a plausible
view, reasonably arrived at upon a conscientious appraisal of the evidence
on record, and does not warrant interference in the exercise of this Court‟s
appellate jurisdiction under Section 36-B of the NDPS Act read with Section
378 of the Cr.P.C.
28. Accordingly, the present appeal, along with all pending applications,
if any, is dismissed. The impugned judgment dated 28.02.2020 passed by the
learned Special Judge-02, NDPS Act, Central District, Tis Hazari Courts,
Delhi, in FIR No. 19/2017, is upheld.
PURUSHAINDRA KUMAR KAURAV, J
JULY 16, 2026
NK/aks
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