Advocates:
Advocate Appeared:
For the Appellant :Mr. Tushar Sharma, Advocate Mr. Amritpal Singh Gill, Advocate Mr. Ruhani Chadha, Advocate Mr. Sarfraj Hussain, Advocate Mr. Ranwant Singh, Advocate
For the Respondent: Mr. Adeshwar Singh Pannu, AAG, Punjab

JUDGMENT :

Jasgurpreet Singh Puri, J.

All the six petitions are taken up together for final disposal with the consent of learned counsel for the parties since all the six petitions arise out of the same FIR and prayer in all the six cases is for the grant of regular bail.

2. All the six petitions have been filed under Section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for the grant of regular bail to the petitioners in FIR No.144 dated 29.10.2020, under Sections 21/27-A/29 & 21-C/25/27 (added later on) of NDPS Act, registered at Police Station STF Phase-4, Mohali, District SAS Nagar.

3. All the learned counsels for the petitioners in all the aforesaid cases submitted that the allegations in the present case were that the police received a secret information with regard to coming up of two cars, one was Endeavour and second was Maruti Ciaz and huge contraband could be seized from the aforesaid two cars. Thereafter, when the Endeavour car was intercepted on 01.11.2020, then there was a recovery of 18 kgs. of Herion and 6 kgs. of ICE having salt of Amphetamin from the aforesaid Endeavour car and from the car, one of the co-accused namely, Manjeet Singh @ Munna was arrested. The aforesaid accused is not petitioner in the present cases. After two days i.e. on 03.11.2020, the other car namely, Ciaz was also intercepted and from the aforesaid car, there was a recovery of 10 kgs. of Heroin and two persons were arrested from the aforesaid car namely, Angrej Singh (Petitioner in CRM-M-10978-2024) and Vishal (Non-petitioner).

4. Thereafter, the investigation started and on the basis of disclosure statement made by a co-accused Vishal, Angrej Singh, Manjeet Singh @ Munna, one other co-accused namely, Rajinder Masih were arrested and there was a recovery of 3 kgs. of Heroin and 2 kgs. of chemicals to prepare Heroin. An amount of Rs. 25 lacs was also recovered from other co-accused namely, Gurdeep Singh from whom there was also a recovery of 418 grams of Heroin but he is not a petitioner in any of the present cases. In this way, five petitioners namely, Shankar Singh, Randeep Singh @ Rani @ Ramneek Singh @ Rammi, Kewal Krishan, Rajinder Masih @ Pele and Vijay Kumar @ Giyani @ Gavi were nominated on the basis of disclosure statement made by a co-accused and so far as the petitioner namely, Angrej Singh is concerned, he was stated to be arrested along with other co-accused namely, Vishal from Ciaz car but his name was not mentioned in the FIR. In the FIR, the names of Manjeet Singh @ Munna and Vishal were mentioned. All the learned counsels for the petitioners have stated that all the petitioners are in custody for more than 3 years except petitioners Shankar Singh and Vijay Kumar @ Giyani @ Gavi who are in custody for about 2 % years and one of the co-accused namely, Avninder Singh @ Shanty who was also nominated on the basis of disclosure statement of a co-accused has since been granted regular bail by a Co-ordinate Bench of this Court on 07.04.2021 in CRM-M-14138-2021 on the ground that he was also nominated on the basis of disclosure statement of a co-accused.

5. Learned counsels further submitted that on the last date of hearing, this Court had rather called for report from the learned trial Court as to why there had been a delay in the trial because in the present case the charges were framed on 05.01.2022 and thereafter again charges were framed on 27.03.2023 and trial of the case has not progressed at all and no prosecution witness has been examined despite the fact that more than one year has elapsed after the framing of the charges. They submitted that although the petitioners are involved in some other cases as well but in the present case, they have been falsely implicated and even otherwise also, since they have been nominated on the basis of disclosure statement of a co-accused (except for petitioner Angrej Singh), they may be considered for the grant of regular bail. They also referred to a judgment of Hon'ble Supreme Court in Tofan Singh