The court emphasized the need to balance personal liberty with the societal interest, especially in cases involving serious offences with adverse implications on society, such as drug trafficking and abuse.

JUDGMENT

Sreenivas Harish Kumar, J. - All these criminal petitions are disposed of by a common order as they arise out of an FIR registered in Cr. No. 109/2020 by the Cottonpet Police Station and being investigated by Central Crime Branch, Bengaluru, in relation to offences punishable under sections 21, 21(c), 27(b), 27(A) and 29 of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 ('NDPS Act' for short) read with section 120B of Indian Penal Code.

2. Criminal Petitions 4934/2020, 5158/2020 and 5362/2020 are filed under section 438 of the Code of Criminal Procedure ('the Code' for short); the petitioners are accused Nos.1, 10 and 8 respectively. Criminal Petitions 5389/2020, 5162/2020 and 5194/2020 are filed under section 439 of the Code and the petitioners are accused Nos. 2, 14, and 4 respectively.

3. Brief account of the events culminating into registration of FIR and all these bail petitions being filed are :

B.K.Ravishankar, arraigned as accused No. 16 in Crime No. 109/2020, was accused No.4 in another criminal case registered by Banasavadi Police Station in Crime No. 588/2018 in relation to offences punishable under NDPS Act. As the certified copy of the proceedings sheet in Crime No. 588/2018 discloses, B.K.Ravishankar was produced before the Special Court Judge on 3.9.2020 at 5.15 PM with a request for remanding him to police custody. The prosecution case concerning Crime No. 109/2020 is that on 3.9.2020 at 8.00 AM, B.K.Ravishankar made a statement under section 67 of the NDPS Act before the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Sri K.C.Goutham disclosing supply, trafficking and consumption of drugs in the parties arranged at various places in Bengaluru City. Based on this information, Sri K.C.Goutham, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, made a report to the Police Inspector, Cottonpet Police Station on 4.9.2020 to take action according to provisions of NDPS Act. In his report to the Police Inspector, he implicated about 12 persons by their names, they were (1) Shivaprakash (2) Ragini Dwivedi (3) Viren Khanna (4) Prashant Ranka (5) Vaibhav Jain (6) Aditya Alva (7) Loom Pepper @ Simon (8) Prashant Raju (9) Ashwin @ Boogi (10) Abhiswamy (11) Rahul Tonse (12) Vinay and others. Thus FIR was initially registered against 12 named accused, and law was set into motion. In the course of investigation, a few others were added as accused. Now accused Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 are in custody. The Special Court declined to grant anticipatory bail to the petitioners who have approached this court under section 438 of the Code, and also regular bail to those petitioners who have made petitions under section 439 of the Code.

4. I have heard elaborate arguments advanced by learned senior counsel, Sri Hasmath Pasha, Sri Jayakumar S Patil, Sri C.H.Hanumantharaya, Sri Tomy Sebastian, and Sri Bharat Kumar and Sri Saravana on behalf of Sri Satyanarayana Chalke and Sri Veeranna G Tigadi, the learned Special Public Prosecutor. Sri Tigadi has filed statement of objections. Contentions in support of the petitioners urged by each counsel are as follows :

4.1. With a hoard of decisions, Sri Hasmath Pasha, (for accused-14, Sanjana Galrani) stressed the following

points -

(i) The name of accused-14 was not there in the report given by the ACP-Goutham, the blame is only against

the peddlers.

(ii) The report that K.C.Goutham gave was on the basis of statement said to have been made by B.K.Ravishankar, who was already in custody in connection with another case. Though the statement purports to be according to section 67 of the NDPS Act, it is hit by section 25 of the Evidence Act.

(iii) The police officer who received information appears to have not reduced it into writing, there was no compliance of section 42(2) of NDPS Act.

(iv) The articles seized from the house of accused-14 during search were mobile phones, laptops and other electronic gadgets, no contraband was seized.

(v) The materials collected by the investigating off