Advocates:
Advocate Appeared:
For the Appellant :Mr. Manjinder Singh Saini, Advocate
For the Respondent:Mr. Manish Bansal, PP, U.T., Chandigarh with Mr. Navjit Singh, Advocate

JUDGMENT :

Jasjit Singh Bedi, J.

This 2nd petition under Section 439 Cr.PC is for the grant of regular bail in case FIR No.71 dated 14.10.2022 under Section 21 of the NDPS Act (Section 29 of the NDPS Act added later on) at Police Station I.T. Park, Chandigarh.

2. The brief facts of the case are that one Sukhwinder Singh @ Sukha son of Om Dutt came to be apprehended with 300 grams of heroin, note book and Rs.50,200/- alleged to be drug money.

During the course of investigation, he disclosed that he was working as a drug dealer and used to purchase heroin from Amandeep Singh (petitioner) son of Sadhu Singh on a lesser rate and would sell it further to drug addicts on a higher rate. In order to purchase heroin from Amandeep Singh, he used to deposit money in the bank account of the mother of Amandeep Singh being operated by Amandeep Singh himself.

The investigation revealed that a sum of Rs.4,81,000/- had been deposited on different dates between 30.09.2022 and 13.10.2022 in the SBI Bank account of the mother of Amandeep Singh.

Thereafter, Amandeep Singh (petitioner) came to be nominated as an accused and Section 29 of the NDPS Act was added in the present case.

3. The learned counsel for the petitioner contends that the petitioner has been falsely implicated in the present case. He contends that the name of the petitioner figured in the disclosure statement of his coaccused namely, Sukhwnder Singh @ Sukha which has little evidentiary value. Reliance is placed on the judgments in the cases of Tofan Singh Versus State of Tamil Nadu, 2020 AIR (Supreme Court) 5592, Rakesh Kumar Singla Versus Union of India, 2021(1) RCR (Criminal) 704, Surinder Kumar Khanna Versus Intelligence Officer Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, 2018(3) RCR (Criminal) 954, State by (NCB) Bengaluru Versus Pallulabid Ahmad Arimutta & Anr. 2022(1) RCR (Criminal) 762, Sanjeev Chandra Agarwal & Anr, Versus Union of India 2021(4) RCR (Criminal) 590, Vijay Singh Versus The State of Haryana, bearing Special Leave to Appeal (CrL) No.(s).1266/2023 decided on 17.05.2023, State of Haryana versus Samarth Kumar 2022 (3) RCR (Criminal) 991 and Vikrant Singh Versus State of Punjab, CRM-M-396572020, wherein it has been held that the accused can be granted the concession of regular bail where he has been named in the disclosure statement of his coaccused and there is no other corroborative evidence against the accused. As the petitioner was in custody since 07.03.2023 and only 02 out of the 23 prosecution witnesses had been examined so far and he was involved in only one other case bearing FIR No.11 dated 08.02.2014 under Section 22 of the NDPS Act, Police Station Rawal Pindi, Kapurthala, he was entitled to the concession of bail.

4. On the other hand, the learned State counsel contends that in view of the serious nature of allegations levelled against the petitioner, he was not entitled to the concession of bail. He, however, concedes that the petitioner was named in the disclosure statement of the arrested accused, in custody since 07.03.2023 and only 02 out of the 23 prosecution witnesses had been examined so far and that he was involved in only one other case.

5. I have heard the learned counsel for the parties.

6. The Hon'ble Supreme Court in the case of State of Haryana Versus Samarth Kumar (supra), held as under:-

"4. The High Court decided to grant pre-arrest bail to the respondents on the only ground that no recovery was effected from the respondents and that they had been implicated only on the basis of the disclosure statement of the main accused Dinesh Kumar. Therefore, reliance was placed by the High Court in the majority judgment of this Court in Tofan Singh v. State of Tamil Nadu reported in (2021) 4 SCC1.

5. But, it is contended by the learned Additional Advocate General appearing on behalf of the State of Haryana that on the basis of the anticipatory bail granted to the respondents, the Special Court was constrained to grant regular bail even to the main accused-Dinesh K