The main legal point established is the need for timely conclusion of confiscation proceedings, the onus on the owner/driver/agent to prove innocence, and the balance between protecting the environment and the rights of the vehicle owner.

All these cases have been clubbed together as a common plea has been advanced before this Court in all the cases on behalf of the petitioners. In all the cases, the vehicles of the petitioners have been seized by the forest officials, at times, with aid of the police, allegedly loaded with forest produce, and/or seized allegedly from forest area. Charges in all the cases are that the vehicles were involved in commission of various forest offences; were transporting various forest materials and/or were involved in illegal mining and they had no valid challan or permit for the same. Individual facts and nature of the vehicle involved in a particular case may vary, but seizure of the vehicle (at times with trailer) is a common factor in all the cases.

2. Submissions were that the vehicles were not seized from forest area and/or were not involved in commission of any forest offence. Submissions were also that the confiscation proceeding is going on since long and the vehicles are lying in open, unprotected, uncared for, expose to vagaries of weather, as a result of which their conditions are fast deteriorating and, if they are not released soon on any condition, whatsoever, they may get damaged beyond any repair and may become junk. Hence, common prayer made by learned counsels for the petitioners was for a direction to the confiscating authority namely, Divisional Forest Officer ( in short “the DFO”) to release the vehicles provisionally on any reasonable terms and conditions which he may like to impose and which may be subject to his final orders in the proceeding.

3. Learned counsels for the petitioners relied upon two judgments of the Apex Court in the case of Sunderbhai Ambalal Desai Vs. State of Gujarat [(2002) 10 SCC 283] and General Insurance Council Vs. State of Andhra Pradesh [(2010) 6 SCC 768].

4. The respondent DFO, on being granted opportunity, filed a counter affidavit in the first case. The counter affidavit, which he has filed in the case, runs into 81 pages of pleadings and 18 pages of annexures. Learned counsels appearing for the respondents submitted that this counter affidavit may be treated as consolidated counter affidavit for all the cases in which separate affidavits have not been filed on behalf of the respondents. He has also referred to a supplementary counter affidavit, filed by the DFO in CWJC No.3785 of 2013, which also runs into 21 pages of pleadings and 31 pages of annexures, which includes a chart of pending cases before him and copies of some Apex Court judgments, as well as a letter, contained in memo no.2856 dated 10.09.2012, of the Secretary, Department of Environment and Forest, Government of Bihar, addressed to all the Divisional Forest Officers, directing them, in reference to some orders of this Court, to dispose of the confiscation cases, pending before them, preferably within four months from the dates of their institution. This order of the Department notwithstanding, it is an admitted position that almost all the confiscation proceedings are pending with the respondent DFO since last more than four months and in majority of the cases since last more than a year. The DFO has taken his defence to the delay in disposal of the confiscation proceedings in his being over-burdened with administrative work and has opposed to interim release of the vehicles on the basis of observations of the Apex Court and other courts in their various orders.

5. In view of the bulk of the counter affidavit and supplementary counter affidavit filed by the DFO, this Court has made an endeavour to prepare a synopsis of his stand point-wise. This Court has found that in paragraph 23 and 32 of the counter affidavit a common stand has been taken by the DFO that, in terms of provisions of Sub-Section 5 of Section 52 of the Indian Forest Act, 1927, it is the owner and/or driver/agent of the vehicle who has to prove that the vehicle was not being used for commission of any forest offence. Onus lies also on the ow