MOHAMMAD ZAHID Vs. GOVERNMENT OF NCT OF DELHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal under Section 19 of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987 ('TADA' for short) is directed against the judgment and order dated July 22, 1997 of the Designated Court II, Delhi convicting the appellant for an offence under Section 5 of TADA and sentencing him to suffer rigorous imprisonment for 5 years and to pay a fine of Rs. 1,000/-, and in default of payment of fine to undergo rigorous imprisonment for 2 months more.

(2.) According to the prosecution case, in the afternoon of March 8, 1990, Sub-Inspector Gopi Chand (P.W. 6) of I.S.B.T. (Inter State Bus Terminus) police post along with Assistant Sub-Inspector Chander Bhan (P.W. 5) and other police personnel was on patrolling duty at the inner gate of I.S.B.T. When they were checking the luggage of passengers they saw the appellant alighting from a bus with a rexin bag. Seeing them he tried to move away briskly . P.W. 6 apprehended him on suspicion and found, on search of his bag, 3 country-made pistols and 12 cartridges. He seized those articles under a memo and put them in separate sealed packets. Along with those articles he forwarded a report to the Kashmere Gate Police Station for registration of a case against the appellant and took up investigation. The seized articles were thereafter sent for examination by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, which reported that the pistols were in working order and the cartridges were alive. On receipt of that report P.W. 6 filed charge-sheet against the appellant with the requisite sanction of the Deputy Commissioner of Police, North District, New Delhi under Section 39 of the Arms Act, 1959.

(3.) The appellant pleaded not guilty to the charges levelled against him; and his specific defence was that in the evening of March 6, 1990 when he got down at I.S.B.T. from the bus he boarded at Meerut the police apprehended him, and after detaining him for three days in the police post foisted a false case against him. He asserted that no country-made fire-arms nor cartridges were recovered from him.