JULFKAR Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Whether in a case under the NDPS Act 1985, a challan presented under Section 173 (2) of the Code of criminal Procedure, is an in-complete challan if presented without the report of the chemical Examiner/Forensic Science Laboratory is the question to be decided in the present case.

(2.) This issue had vexed this Court as well as the Courts subordinate to it till the year 2018 when a Division Bench of this Court in Ajit Singh alias Jeeta versus State of Punjab, Crl. Rev. No.4659 of 2015, held that a challan presented without the report of the Chemical Examiner/Forensic Science Laboratory was an incomplete challan and in such a case an accused was entitled to grant of default bail under Section 167 (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. This judgement decided a batch of 7 cases and is dated 30th November 2018. It was passed on a reference made as under:-

(3.) While deciding the said case, the Division Bench noticed that there were conflicting views of Single Benches of this Court starting from the year 2009 till the year 2016, when on 28th January 2016, the aforementioned reference was made. The matter would seem to have been settled as is apparent from a number of later Single Bench judgements of this Court, some of which are Bhupinder Kumar @ Binder versus State of Haryana,2019 2 RCR(Cri) 376, Tarlok and others versus State of Haryana,2019 3 RCR(Cri) 348 and judgement dated 22 nd May 2020 passed in Criminal Revision No. 1626 of 2019 Janta Singh versus State of Haryana. These Single Bench judgements indicate that the Division Bench judgement in Ajit Singh @ Jeeta (supra) was being followed uniformly. However, in judgement dated 16th October 2019 passed in Criminal Revision No. 1731 of 2019 Akash Kumar @ Sunny versus State of Haryana by a learned Single Bench of this Court, the Division Bench judgement in Ajit Singh @ Jeeta (supra) was declared per incuriam. This judgement has been followed by another Single Bench decision dated 20th December 2019 passed in CRM No. M-44412 of 2019 Shankar versus State of Haryana.