Compliance with procedural requirements under the NDPS Act is crucial for upholding convictions related to narcotic offenses, with substantial evidence supporting conscious possession.

1. The present set of appeals is arising out of the judgment and order dated 21.06.2010 passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Court No.14, Ahmedabad City in Sessions Case No.178 of 2008 whereby the learned sessions judge was pleased to convict the accused respondents for the offences under S.29, S.8(c) read with S.20(b) read with S.29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 ('NDPS Act', for short) and sentenced them to undergo 10 years rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs.1/- lakh each and in default of payment of fine, was pleased to order the accused to undergo further six months simple imprisonment. Against the order of conviction accused persons have filed individual appeals which are numbered as Criminal Appeal No.464 of 2011, Criminal Appeal No.660 of 2011 and Criminal Appeal No.985 of 2011 and one application being Criminal Miscellaneous Application No.2195 of 2014 has also been filed in Criminal Appeal No.464 of 2011, and this is in response to the appeal filed by the State being Criminal Appeal No.1641 of 2010 seeking enhancement of punishment imposed upon the accused persons.

2. These appeals since arising out of the very same judgment and order passed in Sessions Case No.178 of 2008, they were ordered to be heard together with connected appeal of the State and in that process this set of appeals has come up for consideration before this Court finally.

3. The case of the prosecution is that one Customs and Central Excise Inspector Mr.Sanjaybhai Vishwnath Gokhle received secrete information on 26.12.2007 at about 6:00 p.m. that one Maniyar Sahidbhai along with his accomplices named as Imran, Abrahim and Julekhabanu were to pass through Saijpur - Gomtipur - Bapunagar road and they were to come in white colored Maruti Car bearing Registration No.GJ - 6 - AA - 5950 at ST Work Shop at about 2:30 in the night and the said Maniyar Sahidbhai is to come with contraband narcotic drugs 'Charas' to the extent of 40 kg from Ajmer - Rajasthan.
3.1 Upon receipt of said secrete information, as per the case of prosecution, the said information was typed out by him as per requirement of statutory provisions under S.42(2) of the NDPS Act and transmitted to the Zonal Director, who in turn instructed Mr.Gokhle to form a team. Accordingly team was formed including i.e. (i) R.R.Sing, (ii) S.K.Mukherjee and (iii) Smt.Apara Mishra along with other staff members. In furtherance of this instruction passed on to them, after formulating a team, they contacted City Mamlatdar to depute two responsible officers to act as panch witnesses as a result of this City Mamlatdar deputed two officers as panch witnesses named H.D.Makvana and Mr.Parekh. After formulating this team, they along with staff members interacted with the panch witnesses, who, in turn, showed their consent to be part of and to act as panch. After completing necessary formalities at about 10:15 to 10:30 in three auto rickshaws from their office they started to reach at the spot where the aforesaid accused persons were to come as per secrete information and while going to the spot near S.T. Workshop at Gomtipur - Saijpur, they armed with field test kid along with station diary and reached at the spot at about 11:45 pm and after taking position as per inter - se deliberation the said white colored maruti car was seen proceeding towards ST Workshop, these two panch witnesses along with officers and their team intercepted the car wherein they found four persons sitting inside the car in which there was one driver and besides him there was another person and