JUDGMENT

Mr. Anoop Chitkara, J.

The petitioner incarcerated for violating the above-mentioned provisions of Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act) as per the FIR captioned above, on the allegations of possessing 60 tablets containing ALPROZOLAM, has come up before this Court under Section 439 CrPC seeking bail on the ground that the quantity of contraband is less than commercial and rigours of Section 37 of NDPS Act do not apply.

2. In paragraph 18 of the bail application, the accused declares the following criminal antecedents:

3. Petitioner's counsel prays for bail by imposing any stringent conditions. The petitioner contends that the pre-trial incarceration would cause an irreversible injustice to the petitioner and family.

4. While opposing the bail, the State contends that given the criminal past, the accused is likely to indulge in crime once released on bail.

Reasoning:

5. In Maulana Mohd Amir Rashadi v. State of U.P. , (2012) 3 SCC 382, Hon'ble Supreme Court holds,

[10] It is not in dispute and highlighted that the second respondent is a sitting Member of Parliament facing several criminal cases. It is also not in dispute that most of the cases ended in acquittal for want of proper witnesses or pending trial. As observed by the High Court, merely on the basis of criminal antecedents, the claim of the second respondent cannot be rejected. In other words, it is the duty of the Court to find out the role of the accused in the case in which he has been charged and other circumstances such as possibility of fleeing away from the jurisdiction of the Court etc.

6. In Paramjeet Singh v. State of Punjab , CRM-M 50243 of 2021 , this court observed,

While considering each bail petition of the accused with a criminal history, it throws an onerous responsibility upon the Courts to act judiciously with reasonableness because arbitrariness is the antithesis of law. The criminal history must be of cases where the accused was convicted, including the suspended sentences and all pending First Information Reports, wherein the bail petitioner stands arraigned as an accused. In reckoning the number of cases as criminal history, the prosecutions resulting in acquittal or discharge, or when Courts quashed the FIR; the prosecution stands withdrawn, or prosecution filed a closure report; cannot be included. Although crime is to be despised and not the criminal, yet for a recidivist, the contours of a playing field are marshy, and graver the criminal history, slushier the puddles.

7. The tablets recovered are stated to be 60 of Alprozolam IP 0.5 mg. The number of tablets does not exceed one-hundred, and on this ground alone, the petitioner should have been released on bail by the Special Court. The petitioner's arrest and opposition of bail by Public Prosecutor, and refusal by Special Court are all strange events.

8. The quantity allegedly involved in this case is not commercial. Given this, the rigours of Section 37 of the NDPS Act do not apply in the present case.

9. Section 2 (vii-a) of the NDPS Act defines commercial quantity as the quantity greater than the quantity specified in the schedule. Section 2 (xxiii-a) defines small quantity as a quantity less than the quantity specified in the table of the NDPS Act. The remaining quantity falls in an undefined category, gene